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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   2544 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 31, 2026

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Is There Real Anti-Trust Risk From A Coordinated AI Lab Pause?

In AI-pause discussions it is increasingly common to hear the "anti-trust" objection. The idea is that if the labs were to coordinate a pause in frontier AI development, this would be a "conspiracy in restraint of trade" and therefore illegal.

Putting aside the question of whether it is ethical to risk a double-digit chance of destroying the world in order to avoid getting sued (it isn't), is this even a realistic possibility? My impression is that anti-trust law in the United States is legitimately quite fuzzy (as the NCAA is currently discovering).

Putting my cards on the table, I think this argument is cope. The labs want to pretend that they want to pause, but they don't actually want to pause. "If she wanted to, she would," etc. Just today, Anthropic put out a new statement containing the following sentence:

"To be clear about where we stand: we believe the world would benefit if the industry adopted a lawful, verifiable, effective mechanism for coordinated pacing as soon as possible."

It seems like every time I read a statement from them, they've added more and more qualifications. Are they going to keep racing until congress passes a specific anti-trust exemption? That arguably seems like what the word "lawful" is implying.

The labs want to pretend that they want to pause, but they don't actually want to pause. "If she wanted to, she would," etc.

Anthropic is increasingly incoherent. The people who work there are true believers in AI risk and safety. Even Dario seems to be: apparently, seeing the risk of people being more motivated by money than the cause, there's now a directive coming down from on-high to ask questions during the interview process like "what would you do if Dario made a decision to send Anthropic's value to $0?" (I'm not sure what kind of signal Anthropic is hoping to get from questions like that; insert quip about scheming or misspecified rewards here).

But the actual actions taken by Anthropic don't seem to support it. It's now a two-man game, and Dario could call up Sam and come to some arrangement. And now's the ideal time: Sam himself seems spooked by the HF hack (as he should be). Maybe it's all driven by some petty personal feud between them?

I have no legal expertise in anti-trust law here, but regardless it shouldn't play any role in the decision process here, if the stakes are as high as the principals claim to believe. Worst case scenario, you get slapped with a fine; whatever. If you believe the fate of the world is at risk, that's a burden you can bear.

I have it on good authority that the, “how would you feel if the company’s stock went to zero,” question has been a part of the standard Anthropic interview for quite some time. Despite this, no company in history has increased in equity value faster than Anthropic. It really is quite curious. I’m skeptical of the proposition that Anthropic employees are our moral and intellectual superiors, but clearly it cannot be discarded outright.

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