A collection of employees at major artificial intelligence firms has created a petition asking for the federal government to help “deliberately pace” the development of the transformative technology. Bloomberg reports that more than 1,100 workers from companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta and more signed the missive.

“We request that the US government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development,” the petition states. The letter claims there is “a real risk” of AI “understand or control”

Although those do seem like logical and necessary statements, this move for change via petition feels confusing. The optimal time for government intervention would have been before these businesses were engaged in a technological arms race, rather than attempting to reign them in after billions of dollars in investments are on the line. And that’s not mentioning the negative consequences that have been mounting around environmental issues, creative copyright and employment.

Circulating a petition also assumes that current national leaders would bother taking action. Reaching out to a federal government that has taken a haphazard approach to understanding and regulating AI, as well as a belligerent attitude toward international collaboration, seems like a gesture they must know is futile. But perhaps the growing number of incidents where agentic AI causes major security issues is enough to spark real action.