Lawsuit says AI giants made illegal agreement to ‘pace’ development

The suit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, centers on a Sept. 12 essay Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote that called for the leading AI companies to “pace the frontier” after an employee left the company and subsequently said AI was developing without adequate safety guardrails. Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Demis Hassabis all quickly agreed with Amodei on social media, the suit argues.“Over the last few months,” Amodei said in the essay published one week ago on Saturday, “I have become convinced that fully addressing the risks requires even more prudence — not just investing in risk prevention, but pacing the rate of capabilities advancement so that risk prevention has time to keep up. We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models.” Amodei said Anthropic has long advocated for “well-considered regulation of AI” even when it leads the public to accuse the industry of “regulatory capture.” Lawyers representing four named plaintiffs, who pay for subscriptions to ChatGPT, Claude, Grok, or Gemini, “are bringing the suit on behalf of a proposed nationwide class of other paid subscribers to those services,” according to CBS News, and say the AI companies’ behavior reduces the value consumers would otherwise receive from paid AI subscriptions. “The antitrust laws do not permit competitors to decide among themselves that competition is too dangerous,” the plaintiffs argued.Nick Rowley, one of the lawyers who filed the suit, 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 spinning out of control,” according to Politico.“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. “The rule of law should be established transparently and lawfully by our government, with accountability to the public.” Cheyenne Hunt, a lawyer who was involved in the sexual misconduct accusations against former Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) and Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, is a plaintiff in the suit alongside two Florida lawyers and a California resident.TRUMP SAYS HE WILL FORM AI FORCE TO BE LED BY ‘CZAR’Federal lawmakers have increasingly spoken about cybersecurity concerns and the broader impacts of AI since public discourse around the emerging technology shifted away from data center construction in early September. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act on Sept. 3, which would “permanently ban the development and deployment of superintelligent AI,” while other lawmakers have sponsored similar legislation meant to regulate the technology.President Donald Trump has publicly defended data centers and has made leading the AI race against China a prominent component of the White House’s AI policy. He said on Saturday he will create an “AI Force” and appoint an AI “czar” to ensure the United States doesn’t “hinder or stifle the Growth of this incredible industry.” The Washington Examiner reported on Thursday that a senior Justice Department official said that AI companies “coordinating on cybersecurity or security” doesn’t occur to him to be anticompetitive at an event in New York City.