'Violates antitrust laws': Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Google face lawsuit over ‘illegal agreement’ on slowdown
The lawsuit reportedly claimed that Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google made an illegal deal to slowdown their AI development.
A lawsuit was filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California alleging that top AI firms, including OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceXAI, and Google, violated antitrust laws by agreeing to coordinate and slow the pace of their development. According to the plaintiffs, the lawsuit was brought on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of paid subscribers to AI services such as Gemini, Grok, ChatGPT, and Claude.
The lawsuit claimed that the AI companies made an illegal deal to slow their development efforts, which would reduce the value consumers receive for paid AI subscriptions. The alleged coordination largely took place on September 12, 2023, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging cooperation on slowing advancements.
Following this, executives from SpaceXAI, OpenAI, and Google DeepMind supported the proposals. The lawsuit argued that while it was acceptable for individual AI companies to slow their progress for safety reasons, it was illegal for them to collectively restrain their actions through an agreement. Lead attorney Nick Rowley warned that allowing such private, self-serving agreements could lead to AI systems becoming uncontrollable and potentially posing a threat to humanity.
Anthropic CEO Amodei had previously advocated for an industry-wide slowdown and third-party evaluations, acknowledging potential antitrust challenges and suggesting that the US government should mediate or enable these cross-lab discussions.
Written by urgent.news from Hindustan Times - World News's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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