As first reported by Bloomberg, OpenAI’s global policy chief Chris Lehane told reporters on Tuesday that the company has been working with rivals Anthropic and Google DeepMind on AI safety for several weeks. Lehane is reportedly in Washington to work with US lawmakers to address catastrophic risks related to AI.
The revelations follow an essay by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published on Saturday, calling for the industry to work together to slow the pace of frontier AI and avoid catastrophic risks. Industry AI leaders, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google’s Demis Hassabis, and SpaceXAI’s Elon Musk, supported Amodei’s letter and call to action, and Altman said OpenAI would join Anthropic in building in-house third-party evaluators to monitor safety.
Lehane acknowledged on Tuesday that the three companies have been in discussions for several weeks regarding the safety of AI. Some officials, including Mr. Altman, say such talks could put the companies at risk of violating antitrust laws if they prove anticompetitive. Mr. Amodei’s essay proposed a narrow government exemption that would allow such safety adjustments, but Mr. Lehane reportedly said that companies did not need one.
This news confirms previous reports and suggests that the two companies were working together. In an interview with Fortune magazine late last week, Altman hinted that he had been in private discussions with other AI leaders. This week, The Information reported that the three companies are working together to form an AI industry standards body, but Altman told staff that it would have to happen without support from the U.S. government.
In July, Hassabis called on the US to create a new standards body to serve as an AI watchdog with the power to review the world’s most advanced models and orchestrate an industry-wide slowdown if danger develops.
President Trump has dismissed the safety concerns as fabricated, arguing that an economic slowdown would give China a competitive advantage and calling for stricter regulations. His chief AI advisor, David Sachs, a longtime investor with a personal stake in much of the industry, echoed this sentiment, saying that concerns about existential risks from AI are overblown.
At the same Tuesday meeting, Lehane said OpenAI supports a provision in the FRONTIER Act that forces top frontier laboratories to bring in “independent verifiers” into their companies to ensure models are developed safely.
TechCrunch has reached out to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI for comment.
If you buy through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. This does not affect editorial independence.
