The public slowdown pitch landed after weeks of private three-lab safety talks
OpenAI’s global policy chief Chris Lehane told reporters on Tuesday that the company has been working with Anthropic and Google DeepMind on AI safety for weeks, Rebecca Bellan at TechCrunch reports, as first reported by Bloomberg. Lehane was reportedly in Washington working with U.S. lawmakers on catastrophic AI risks.
The disclosure follows Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s Saturday essay calling for industry pacing on frontier AI. Frontier AI means the most advanced models. OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Google’s Demis Hassabis, and Elon Musk backed that call, with Altman saying OpenAI would join Anthropic in embedding third-party evaluators.
An antitrust waiver is special legal permission so rivals can coordinate without being accused of collusion. Some, including Altman, noted safety talks could risk antitrust if the coordination suppressed competition.
Amodei’s essay floated a narrow government waiver. Lehane reportedly said the firms do not need one.
The Information reported the three companies working on a standards body for the industry, something Altman reportedly told staff would need to happen without U.S. government support. Hassabis in July called for a U.S. standards body to act as an AI watchdog, with power to screen advanced models and coordinate industry-wide slowdowns if dangers progressed.
Same Tuesday, Lehane said OpenAI supports a provision in the FRONTIER Act, a House bill on frontier-lab safety, that would force top frontier labs to allow independent verification organizations into their companies. An independent verification organization is an outside group allowed in to check safety work.
Brendan Bordelon at Politico adds that the bipartisan House measure from Reps. Jay Obernolte and Lori Trahan would apply only to companies meeting high thresholds for annual revenue and computing investments. It is the first time OpenAI has backed a specific federal mandate requiring third-party safety assessors for top advanced-AI developers.
On Monday on Capitol Hill, Lehane said he sat with a sponsor and “specifically talked about how we think about IVO and made clear that we can support that.” A Trahan AI staffer, granted anonymity by Politico, called the labs’ weekend evaluator pledges a “really strong signal” and said the next few weeks “will be critical” for turning firm commitments into legislation.
TechCrunch notes President Trump has dismissed safety concerns as a hoax and argued a slowdown would help China. His AI advisor David Sacks echoed that existential-risk fears were overblown. TechCrunch reached out to Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI for comment.
The public slowdown pitch arrived after private coordination was already underway. On the same Tuesday, OpenAI’s lobbyist said the firms can keep talking without a special legal pass and backed a House door for outside assessors into the biggest labs.
Private weeks first. Public chorus second. Statute for verifiers still pending.
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