Report from Bloomberg
In Brief – A lawsuit alleges that Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, and Google illegally agreed to slow the pace of artificial intelligence (AI) development, depriving paying subscribers of product improvements they otherwise would have received. According to the complaint, executives from the four companies coordinated by publicly endorsing an essay by Anthropic’s CEO calling for “industry-wide coordination” and “limits on the rate of unchecked AI progress.” The plaintiffs argue that the alleged agreement among competitors violates Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which prohibits agreements that restrain competition. The plaintiffs, who subscribe to the defendants’ AI services, are seeking class certification, an injunction against the companies and a declaration that they violated federal antitrust law by engaging in an output-restricting cartel. Their counsel said government regulation rather than company cooperation should establish AI safeguards.
Context – Although Dario Amodei’s essay calling for an AI slowdown garnered huge attention, OpenAI has been talking with other AI companies since mid-summer about how to address safety concerns. While Amodei mentioned an antitrust exemption, that’s unlikely for a collection of reasons. First, the Department of Justice’s top antitrust official recently said he didn’t think an exemption was needed, noting, “It doesn’t occur to me that coordinating on cybersecurity or security is anti-competitive”. David Sacks, a top AI policy advisor to President Trump, likewise rejected the need for antitrust exemption, arguing that safe and reliable models are good business because they are what customers want and a safety disaster would be financially devastating to a company. An exemption is also likely dead in Congress, with Senate Republicans Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO), who usually occupy opposite sides in AI debates, recently agreeing that antitrust relief for top AI companies should be off the table. The brilliant AI leaders would have been better served by saying that companies should speed up their investments in safety and reliability.