OpenAI's global policy chief, Chris Lehane, confirmed that the company has been working with rivals Anthropic and Google DeepMind on AI safety for weeks, as first reported by Bloomberg. The collaboration comes amid growing concerns about the catastrophic risks associated with AI development.
Lehane reported that the three companies have been in discussions for several weeks regarding AI safety protocols. This effort is part of a broader industry push to address risks, with AI leaders including Sam Altman and Demis Hassabis supporting a call to slow the pace of frontier AI development.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei proposed a narrow government waiver to allow such safety coordination, but Lehane stated the firms do not need one. The companies are reportedly working together to create a standards body for the AI industry, which Altman said should be established without government support.
"We need to slow the pace of frontier AI and avoid catastrophic risks," said Dario Amodei, Anthropic's CEO. This call to action has been supported by industry leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, who said the company would join Anthropic in embedding third-party evaluators to monitor for safety.
The announcement follows a July call by Demis Hassabis for the U.S. to establish a new standards body to act as an AI watchdog. President Trump has dismissed these concerns, arguing that any slowdown would give China an advantage in the AI race.
OpenAI did not comment on the specific legal risks of such collaboration, and some leaders, including Altman, have noted that the talks could violate antitrust laws if found to suppress competition. The companies are reportedly moving forward with plans to develop a unified approach to AI safety.
Source: techcrunch
