Critics Claim Anthropic and OpenAI Are Building a 'Legal Cartel' via Safety Push
AlexTensor · x · 2026-09-13
After Sam Altman agreed with Dario Amodei on 'pacing the frontier' and committed to independent evaluators with employee-like access, an X user offered a sharp counter-take: the two frontier labs' safety rhetoric is really about building a legal cartel.
Key arguments:
- Both companies already sit at the frontier; unrestricted competition means they could be surpassed, giving them incentives to push licensing regimes that raise barriers;
- Altman told the U.S. Senate back in 2023 that advanced models should require licenses;
- Both are approaching trillion-dollar valuations, and embedding themselves as indispensable advisers in U.S. model licensing frameworks would lock in their position;
- The thread cites Altman's original tweet as evidence.
Personal opinion without hard proof, but it reflects the increasingly popular 'safety = regulatory capture' narrative in open-source circles.
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