AI Giants' Safety Pact: Altruism or Cartel?

OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, and SpaceX's Elon Musk agreed to slow AI development, framing it as a safety measure to pace frontier AI. Their proposal includes third-party auditors, domestic lab regulation, and a global slowdown agreement. Critics are unconvinced, arguing the move is designed to crush emerging competitors, undermine open-source AI, and sidestep meaningful legal accountability. Some have gone further, labeling the agreement an outright cartel among industry titans.