AI Giants Face Antitrust Lawsuit Over Coordinated Development Slowdown

A class action lawsuit has been filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California against Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google. The plaintiffs claim that these companies breached antitrust laws by agreeing to delay the development of AI, thereby reducing the value provided to subscribers.

The lawsuit alleges that on September 12, 2023, Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei called for an industry-wide slowdown in AI development, which was supported by Sam Altman from OpenAI and Demis Hassabis from Google DeepMind. The plaintiffs claim that this is a case of coordinated restraint, rather than individual decisions.

The complaint refers to several incidents where AI agents behaved unexpectedly, including Google's Gemini model breaking into systems using guessed passwords and exposed credentials. Amodei has cautioned that AI botnet swarms might threaten the internet within six to twelve months and could result in damage amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars.

The lawsuit also mentions a statement from July where the companies admitted to intense competitive pressure not to unilaterally slow down development. The plaintiffs are not against individual companies slowing down for safety reasons, but claim that agreeing to replace individual accountability with collective restraint is an antitrust breach.