OpenAI Confirms Weeks of AI Safety Talks With Anthropic and Google DeepMind
OpenAI's global policy chief Chris Lehane confirms that the company has been holding AI safety discussions with rivals Anthropic and Google DeepMind for several weeks. Lehane makes the revelation while in Washington, where he is working with U.S. lawmakers on addressing catastrophic risks associated with AI. The talks follow Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's published essay calling for the industry to slow the pace of frontier AI development and collaborate to avoid catastrophic risks.
Industry leaders including OpenAI's Sam Altman, Google's Demis Hassabis, and Elon Musk support Amodei's call to action, with Altman saying OpenAI will join Anthropic in embedding third-party evaluators to monitor safety. The three companies are also reportedly working to create a standards body for the AI industry without U.S. government support. However, the coordination raises antitrust concerns, as critics note that such talks could suppress competition. While Amodei proposes a narrow government waiver to allow safety coordination, Lehane says the firms don't need one.
The push for industry self-regulation faces resistance from the White House, where President Trump dismisses safety concerns as a hoax and argues that any slowdown would hand China an advantage in the AI race. His advisor David Sacks echoes this view, calling existential risk fears overblown. Meanwhile, Lehane says OpenAI supports a provision in the FRONTIER Act that would require top frontier labs to admit independent verification organizations to ensure models are developed safely.