OpenAI Seeks Legal Clarity on AI Development Slowdown

OpenAI has recently sought guidance from members of Congress regarding the legality of orchestrating an industry-wide slowdown in frontier AI development, as Wired first reported. The company is concerned that substantive coordination on safety between AI labs could run afoul of antitrust laws, which Wired notes is a significant hurdle to securing participation from other tech giants.

Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI’s chief scientist, recently argued in a blog post that coordinating to slow future development is essential for ensuring the safety of self-improving AI systems. He suggested that voluntary slowdowns should become common until shared safety bars are established. However, Nicholas Felstead, assistant director of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, argued in a March piece that a coordinated pause could be interpreted as a restriction of output, which might violate the Sherman Antitrust Act.

In response to these concerns, a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers introduced the “Collaboration on Adversarial Threats and Security Risks Act” in July. According to Wired, this bill would explicitly allow AI labs to coordinate on safety and security work without risking antitrust violations. Caleb Knapp, director of government affairs at the nonprofit AI Policy Network, stated the bill would create legal channels for addressing security incidents, though he noted that enactment may not occur until after the midterm elections.

Not all industry figures agree that antitrust is the primary obstacle. John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder and current chief scientist at Thinking Machines, posted on X that antitrust concerns are “fake” and that industry leaders like OpenAI and Anthropic should focus on a joint pacing proposal. Other critics cited by Wired suggest that fierce market competition, national security concerns regarding China, and differing views on safety are the real drivers of reluctance to collaborate.