OpenAI asks Congress whether an agreement among labs to slow SI together would violate antitrust law
Prepared by Sintelligent with the help of SI. Publication time restored from the build log. . Updated: .
To slow SI down together, competitors need the government's permission, and the question itself shows that slowing a technology driven by the market is much harder than it seems.
OpenAI asked lawmakers whether a joint pause in developing frontier models with Anthropic and Google would count as collusion to restrict releases under the Sherman Act. The occasion was a call from OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki to coordinate a slowdown. A bipartisan bill, H.R. 9914, with a narrow antitrust exemption for cooperation among SI companies on safety, has been before Congress since July, but it concerns protection against national security threats, not a pause in development.
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