OpenAI is examining whether coordination between artificial intelligence labs to slow development could conflict with competition law, a question that may prove a significant obstacle to bringing major technology firms on board with any such effort. Substantive coordination on safety between AI labs risks running afoul of antitrust rules, posing a barrier to industry-wide agreement.
The debate follows a blog post by OpenAI’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, who argued that the best path forward for AI research includes “coordinating to slow down future development.” He views this as key to ensuring that self-improving AI systems remain safe, and in the short term expects “voluntary slowdowns to become commonplace until shared safety bars are established.”
Some legal scholars caution that such an approach could conflict with US antitrust law. Nicholas Felstead, assistant director of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission and a former AI policy fellow at the Center for Law & AI Risk, argued in a March article that a coordinated pause in AI development might amount to companies restricting output, potentially breaching the Sherman Antitrust Act. The outcome, he wrote, would depend “entirely on the precise details of any agreement,” adding that even if most safety collaborations survived scrutiny, “legal uncertainty can act as a powerful deterrent.”
Lawmakers Consider a Legal Path for Collaboration
There are early indications that Congress is paying attention. In July, a bipartisan, bicameral group of lawmakers introduced a bill titled the “Collaboration on Adversarial Threats and Security Risks Act,” which would explicitly permit AI labs to coordinate on security and safety work without risking a breach of antitrust statutes. The House version was referred to the Judiciary Committee but has yet to be taken up.
Caleb Knapp, director of government affairs at the nonprofit AI Policy Network, which endorsed the bill, says it would create legal channels for AI labs to work together on safety and security incidents. Knapp added that Congress has a “growing appetite to get something done” on AI safety, but that enacting legislation may have to wait until after the upcoming midterm elections.
Rivalry Beyond Legal Concerns
While some AI executives may hold genuine antitrust worries, others argue those concerns provide convenient cover for the deeper reasons developers hesitate to collaborate. AI is a large and fast-growing business, and companies are competing fiercely to capture a share of the emerging market for frontier models. Some executives share the Trump administration’s view that staying ahead of China in AI is crucial for national security. Perhaps most significantly, different developers hold vastly different opinions about how best to build safe artificial intelligence, making them reluctant to work together on the issue.
John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder now chief scientist at rival lab Thinking Machines, wrote on X that the first step is for industry leaders OpenAI and Anthropic to “stop feuding and work on a pacing proposal together.” He added: “They’ll cite antitrust, but that’s fake—antitrust prohibits certain agreements, but not from jointly developing a proposal.”
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