The apparent unity among individual players in the market for artificial intelligence systems in voluntarily slowing development has begun to have a negative impact—at least on their reputations, as some paid subscribers to popular chatbots accused Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google of illegal collusion in court.
Image source: Unsplash, Sasun Bughdaryan
as explained AP NewsA lawsuit filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California on behalf of four popular chatbot users accuses the companies of violating U.S. antitrust laws by conspiring to reduce the value of services they provide to paying users.
The plaintiffs, who seek to treat the lawsuit as a class action, allege that coordination among the defendants occurred at a critical stage on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a high-profile article calling on market participants to voluntarily slow down the development of artificial intelligence for public safety reasons. That same day, as noted in the lawsuit, the heads of OpenAI, SpaceX (xAI), and Google DeepMind expressed solidarity with Amodei’s ideas.
The plaintiffs even believe that coordination among market participants began earlier, with some developers of artificial intelligence models calling on the U.S. government to support a global initiative as early as July to slow the development of artificial intelligence using automated systems. Plaintiffs maintain that such a conspiracy is clearly “It will have an anti-competitive effect on consumers”. At the same time, they do not object to developers’ individual decisions to slow down artificial intelligence, but believe that collective action in this direction violates antitrust laws. They believe that competitive markets can simultaneously combine responsible business conduct with real progress.
Attorney Nick Rowley, lead attorney for the plaintiffs, said: “If we allow AI security protocols to be controlled by the private protocols of a group of the most powerful commercial companies aiming to make a profit, AI will quickly escape human control and potentially destroy us all.”. In his original article, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei called on the U.S. government to at least initiate a negotiation process among market participants. Sam Altman, the head of rival OpenAI, supports the idea of federal rules to lay out a framework for artificial intelligence safety requirements, but said he doesn’t see the need to wait for any antitrust clearance to begin the work.
The plaintiffs’ argument does not oppose the ability of AI companies to ask any U.S. federal agency to create rules to regulate the industry. Nor do they object to market participants seeking regulatory approval to coordinate their activities in this area. U.S. President Donald Trump has made it clear that he does not welcome the idea of deliberately slowing the development of artificial intelligence because it could weaken the position of domestic developers in competition with their Chinese counterparts. Along the way, he announced the creation of a national “artificial intelligence force” led by a highly intelligent “AI czar.”
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