Leading AI Firms Accused of Secretly Slowing Down to Protect Profits
A new lawsuit claims that four leading AI companies - Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, and Google - made an illegal agreement to slow down their respective AI development efforts.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, argues that these companies violated antitrust laws by coordinating slowdown efforts. This would reduce the value consumers get from paid AI subscriptions, the plaintiffs claim.
The coordination allegedly took place on September 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging industrywide cooperation on slowing down advancements in favor of enhanced safety measures. That same day, OpenAI's Sam Altman, SpaceXAI's Elon Musk, and Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis each publicly responded to Amodei's proposals in agreement.
The plaintiffs argue that this agreement among the chief rivals in AI has an anticompetitive effect on consumers.