Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI, Google sued over call to ‘pace’ AI development
Por Tyler Katzenberger and Christine Mui — POLITICO – TOP Stories
SACRAMENTO, California — AI giants Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are facing allegations of collusion following recent calls for a coordinated slowdown of AI development, according to a civil lawsuit filed in federal court Friday.
The complaint claims that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s public plea earlier this month for “industry-wide coordination” to “pace the frontier” of AI advancement, which drew agreement from SpaceXAI head Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis, amounted to an illegal business agreement between competitors under U.S. antitrust law.
Nick Rowley, one of the lawyers who filed the suit in the Northern District Court of California on behalf of four plaintiffs, said the case was filed to ensure “private self-serving agreements between the world’s most powerful ‘for profit’ technology companies” don’t result in AI “quickly spin[ing] out of human control.”
“Humanity deserves iron clad safeguards when it comes to extinction event threats such as nuclear warfare and now the biggest risk to mankind in history,” Rowley said in a statement. “The rule of law should be established transparently and lawfully by our government, with accountability to the public.”
Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer who helped bring to light accusations of sexual misconduct against former California Rep. Eric Swalwell and former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner earlier this year, is a plaintiff in the case. She is joined by Florida attorneys Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas, and California resident Christine Bullock. In the filing, the plaintiffs signalled they intend to try to expand the case into a class-action on behalf of others impacted by any decision by the companies to slow down.
Industry leaders’ support for slowing AI development came after dire warnings from current and former AI researchers that the technology, if allowed to develop without additional guardrails, posed potentially existential risks to humanity’s survival.
OpenAI, Anthropic, SpaceXAI and Google did not immediately return requests for comment.
Fonte: POLITICO – TOP Stories
