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About two years ago, Openai founder Sam Altman stood in front of lawmakers at a parliamentary hearing and called for stronger regulations on artificial intelligence. The technology is “dangerous” and “can cause serious harm to the world,” Altman said, calling for the creation of a new regulator to address AI safety.
Today, Altman and the AI industry promote very different messages. The AI that they once framed as an existential threat to humanity is now key to maintaining America's prosperity and hegemony. The once-needed regulations are now criticized as obstacles that weaken the United States and burn its enemies.
It is debate whether the AI industry really wanted government surveillance, but what has become clear over the past year is that they are willing to spend exorbitant amounts of money to ensure that regulations exist on the condition arise. Last week there was a surge in AI lobbying committees from the industry last week from the Wall Street Journal, which said Silicon Valley plans to pour $100 million into a network of opposing AI regulations ahead of next year's midterm elections.
One of the biggest efforts to rock candidates in favor of AI is a super PAC called Lead Our Future, supported by Openai President Greg Brockman and venture capitalist Andreessen Horowitz. According to the Wall Street Journal, the group plans bipartisan spending on candidates in key states with AI policy, including New York, Illinois and California, and operates digital candidates.
Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has established its own Super PAC, which is specifically targeted at AI regulations in California's hometown. Metacalifornia PAC will spend tens of millions of people on elections for the state that will be holding the governor's race in 2026.
The new super PAC is an escalation of already heavily spending in the AI industry to influence government policies regarding technology. Large AI companies have stepped up lobbying. Openai has spent around $620,000 on lobbying this year alone. Meanwhile, Openai's rival humanity spent $910,000 on lobbying in the second quarter, Politico reported an increase from $150,000 in the same period last year.
The profits promised by AI companies have not yet been fully realized, and the harm associated with this technology is becoming increasingly clear, resulting in spending blitz. A recent study from MIT showed that 95% of the companies they studied did not receive ROI from the generated AI program, while another study from researchers at Stanford University found that AI severely hurts the job outlook for young workers. Meanwhile, concerns about the mental health impact of AI have been in the spotlight over the past week after parents of teenagers who died of suicide filed a lawsuit over Openai's accusation of the company's chatbot for the death of their son.
Despite concerns about public safety, labor and the environment surrounding AI, the industry may not have to work hard to find sympathetic ears in Washington. The Trump administration, which already has extensive ties to the tech industry, suggests it is determined at any cost to become the power of the world's dominant AI.
“We can't stop that, politics can't stop it,” Trump said last month in a speech about winning the AI race. “You can't stop that with stupid rules.”
Openai faces first illegal death lawsuit
The parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine are suing Openai in an illegal death case after his son died in suicide. The lawsuit alleges that Raine spoke extensively with ChatGpt about his suicidal ideation and uploaded a picture of the rope, but the chatbot claimed he had not stopped teenagers or stopped communicating with him.
The family argues that this is not an edge case, but a flaw inherent in the way the system is designed.
During his conversation with the Guardian, Jay Edelson, one of the lawyers representing the Raine family, said he is aware that the Open response knows about the GPT-4o. The family incident rests on allegations that Openai hastily rushed to release the GPT-4O and sacrificed safety tests to meet its launch date, based on previous media reports. Without that safety test, the company would not have captured any particular conflicts in how the system was designed, the family lawsuit alleges. So instead of finishing the conversation with the teenager, the GPT-4o provided empathetic ears after he began talking about hurting himself.
The lawsuit is the first illegal death case against Openai, which last week announced that it would change the way chatbots respond to users in mental distress. In a statement to the New York Times, the company said it was “deeply saddened” by Lane's death, suggesting that ChatGpt's safeguards would be less reliable over the course of the long conversation.
While concerns about suicide prevention and harmful relationships with chatbots have been around for years, the widespread adoption of the technology has led to better safety guardrails from Watchdog Groups. In another case this year, a 76-year-old cognitively impaired man from New Jersey traveled to New York City to meet a meta-chatbot persona called “Big Sis Billy” and told him. The chatbot has repeatedly told men that it was a real woman.
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Read the report of the lawsuit here.
Elon Musk sues Apple for the Open, alleging conspiracy
Elon Musk's artificial intelligence startup Xai sued Apple and Openai this week, accusing him of monopolizing the AI chatbot market and working together to unfairly eliminate rivals like his company's Grok. Musk's company is trying to recover billions of damages while throwing wrenches at the partnership Apple and Openai announced last year to Great Fanfare.
Musk's lawsuit accused both companies of “a conspiracy to monopolise the market for smartphones and generator AI chatbots,” and follows the legal threat he made earlier this month on accusations that Apple's App Store supports ChatGpt over other AI alternatives.
Openai rejected Musk's allegations and characterized the lawsuit as evidence of the billionaire's malicious campaign against the company. “This latest submission is consistent with Musk's continued harassment patterns,” an Openai spokesperson said.
As the report on the Guardian case detailed, the legal drama is yet another chapter in the long and controversial relationship between Musk and Altman.
The lawsuit is the latest front in an ongoing feud between Musk and Altman. The two high-tech billionaires founded Openai together in 2015, but have since been increasingly out of public order and have filed lawsuits frequently.
Musk left Openai after proposing to take over the company in 2018, then filed multiple lawsuits against the company over plans to move to a for-profit company. Altman and Openai rejected Musk's criticism and framed him as a petty, former partner of Vindictive.
Read all the stories about Musk's suits against Openai and Apple.
