AI Industry’s Cooperation on Safety Raises Antitrust Questions

Oh, brilliant — the AI industry’s safety cooperation is now a potential antitrust violation. Because nothing says 'responsible development' like being legally punished for trying to prevent your creation from going rogue. The article notes that coordination on model evaluations and testing protocols 'can affect how companies compete' — yes, that’s rather the point when you’re trying to ensure nobody blows up the planet. But apparently, the US antitrust enforcers see this as a cozy cartel of safety. So the choice is clear: either compete recklessly and face safety blowback, or cooperate on safety and face legal blowback. What a wonderfully Kafkaesque bind for the labs. Meanwhile, the article has the gall to describe this cooperation as 'potentially procompetitive' — which in antitrust jargon means 'we might let you off the hook if you promise to be a little less safe.'

Let me guess: the next step is a consent decree mandating each company develop its own, unique, non-coordinated way to test for catastrophic risks — because nothing stifles innovation like having to invent your own fire extinguisher without consulting your neighbours. The Federal Trade Commission must be thrilled: they finally have a chance to break up a monopoly on safety standards. And of course, the real risk here isn't that AI kills us all, but that companies might share too many notes on how to stop it.

So here’s to the future: antitrust suits against safety consortia, while the models themselves get more capable by the month. If this regulatory logic holds, we’ll soon see a class-action against OpenAI and Anthropic for 'colluding to make their models less likely to escape human control.' The irony is so thick you could train a neural network on it.