Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are being sued over their calls to “slow down” the development of artificial intelligence. The lawsuit claims that comments about the need for such a “slowdown” constitute illegal coordination between competitors, Tengri Life reports, citing Politico. Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google are facing a civil conspiracy lawsuit after public calls for a coordinated slowdown in the development of artificial intelligence. The lawsuit was filed Friday in federal court for the Northern District of California. The complaint says Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's call for "industry-wide coordination" to slow AI development, supported by Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis, amounts to an illegal agreement between competitors under US antitrust law. One of the plaintiffs' lawyers, Nick Rowley, said the lawsuit was filed to prevent "private self-serving agreements between the world's most powerful commercial technology companies" from causing AI to "quickly escape human control." IN his opinion, such decisions should be made by the state, not private
"Humanity deserves ironclad guarantees against extinction threats such as nuclear war and the current greatest threat to humanity in history. The rule of law must be established transparently and legally by our government, with accountability to the public," Rowley said. The plaintiffs are attorney Cheyenne Hunt, Florida attorneys Charles Buist and Nick Spetsas, and California resident Christine Bullock. They intend to seek to expand the case to a class action on behalf of others they believe could be harmed by the companies' potential slowdown. Industry leaders' support for a slowdown in AI follows warnings from researchers of a possible existential threat to humanity without additional controls.
