Is Big Tech’s AI slowdown a safety pact or a cartel?

<figure> <img alt="Enlightened robots standing next to each other." data-caption="" data-portal-copyright="Image: Cath Virginia / The Verge, Getty Images" data-has-syndication-rights="1" src="https://platform.theverge.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2025/11/STKS522_AGI_A.jpg?quality=90&#038;strip=all&#038;crop=0,0,100,100" /> <figcaption> </figcaption> </figure> <p class="has-drop-cap wp-block-paragraph">When OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind cofounder Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX head Elon Musk loosely agreed over the weekend to slow down AI development, skeptics spotted an ulterior motive immediately. The AI titans had declared that their aim was to "pace the frontier," signing on at least partially to a proposal for embedding third-party auditors, regulating domestic labs, and reaching a global slowdown agreement. Their critics, however, argued they simply wanted to stop would-be competitors, kneecap the open-source movement, and avoid real legal safeguards - <a href="https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTUCseghH/">some</a> dubbed it an outright "cartel." </p> <p class="wp-block-paragraph">The truth …</p> <p><a href="https://www.theverge.com/ai-artificial-intelligence/995186/is-big-techs-ai-slowdown-a-safety-pact-or-a-cartel">Read the full story at The Verge.</a></p>