Antitrust scholar: AI labs agreeing to slow innovation is per se illegal — but saving humanity might justify it
Afinetheorem · x · 2026-09-10
Antitrust scholar Erik Hovenkamp poses an interesting hypothetical: can competing AI companies agree to slow their pace of innovation? Ordinarily such pacing agreements would be per se illegal, but 'potentially saving humanity' may count as an important efficiency defense. The context: warning shots like the Hugging Face attack have made pacing agreements between US labs more viable, though preventing a global race may require costly measures such as a temporary ban on improving model capabilities.
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