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Title: Lawsuit Says Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI And Google Made Illegal
Agreement On AI Slowdown

Link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/26/09/20/21522...

Tom's Hardware reports: Four plaintiffs subscribed to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok,
or Gemini filed a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging that the developers
of these AI models violated antitrust laws when they agreed to slow AI
development. According to the Associated Press, the lawsuit argues that this
agreement would "reduce the value consumers get for paid AI subscriptions"
and that this coordination started in July 2026 after the leading AI labs
signed a statement admitting there is "intense competitive pressure not to
unilaterally slow" development. The plaintiffs recognize the need for AI
development to slow for the sake of safety, but they say that Anthropic
founder Dario Amodei's cooperation proposal is a "shortcut" that "substitutes
collective restraint for individual accountability." Attorney Nick Rowley,
the lead counsel for the plaintiffs, says, "AI will quickly spin out of human
control and could kill us all if we allow AI safety and protocol ... to be
controlled by private self-serving agreements between the world's most
powerful 'for profit' technology companies." "Representatives for Anthropic,
OpenAI, Google and SpaceXAI did not immediately respond..." reports the
Associated Press: The coordination largely took place on Sept. 12, the
lawsuit argues, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging for
industrywide cooperation on decelerating advancements in favor of enhanced
safety measures. That same day, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, SpaceXAI CEO Elon Musk
and Google DeepMind's co-founder and chair Demis Hassabis each publicly
responded to Amodei's proposals in agreement. But the lawsuit also alleges
that the coordination began to take shape months earlier. It points to a
statement from July 2026 that high-ranking employees from several of the
leading AI labs signed that acknowledged the "intense competitive pressure
not to unilaterally slow" development. That statement called on the
government to support a global effort to slow automated AI development. Sam
Altman even specificially said "we do not believe we need to wait for an
antitrust exemption or legislation to begin the work of providing this
confidence," notes Tom's Hardware. However, the Trump administration shot
down this idea... Chinese state media also criticized this announcement,
saying that the call to put the brakes on AI development is nothing but a
response to Chinese competition, especially as Amodei's essay explicitly
mentioned the desire to slow China's progress and widen the U.S.'s gap over
Beijing

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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