Real Alpha

The Cognitive Revolution · 5 min instead of 2 h 18 m · Oct 14, 2026

Pace AI progress with concrete pause triggers, not a growth cap

Alan Chan

Senior research fellow, GovAI

Lead author of Visibility into AI Agents, a paper on agent IDs, real-time monitoring and activity logs; PhD from Mila.

  • Nathan LabenzHost · Host, The Cognitive Revolution

    Founded AI video company Waymark and red-teamed GPT-4 before its release.

About this segment

Chan argues that if-then pause commitments tied to loss-of-control indicators are easier to agree on than a cap on progress. Embedded auditors could ease the race dynamics that led Anthropic to drop such commitments.

From “Governing AI Agents: Alan Chan of GovAI on Monitoring, Agent IDs, Rogue Agents & Preparing for RSI”, Oct 14, 2026. Watch the full episode

“When we see those indicators, we should probably pause and try to figure out what went down before going forward again.”
Alan Chanat 1:48:46 · The Cognitive Revolution1:48:46

Takeaways

  1. A cap on the rate of capability gains is intuitive but hard to agree on
  2. Pausing on loss-of-control events slows frontier work as risks grow
  3. Embedded auditors can verify commitments and reduce the fear of rivals pulling ahead
Watch 5:24 from 1:45:54

In this episode

Full episode
  1. 1:10:05Why an AI takeover is much harder than the rogue-agent panic suggests4:29

  2. 1:45:54Pace AI progress with concrete pause triggers, not a growth cap5:24

  3. 9:06The UK AISI incident happened because monitoring was left on a to-do list2:14Up next