They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.<p>And if the FTC chair is not agreeable, they will be threatened by said lobbyists and eventually be fired.<p>If this sounds far-fetched, it is exactly what happened to Gail Slater, then-head of the DOJ's antitrust division and her deputies in 2025 over HPE’s bid to acquire Juniper.<p>Wall Street Journal archive link: <a href="https://archive.ph/IMer9" rel="nofollow">https://archive.ph/IMer9</a>
> They just need to hire the right lobbyists, get a meeting at the White House, agree on the terms and call it a settlement.<p>I wonder if this is just self-consciously a self-dealing thing explicitly designed to block off further investigations. Clear them, then they can't be properly investigated for that activity in the future.
It doesn't really work that way, although I wouldn't rule out someone in the administration thinking it does. There's nothing an FTC investigator can do to "clear them" in a way that would prevent a future investigation for future instances of the same activity. An FTC decision not to bring a complaint or to request only trivial damages doesn't create a binding precedent for similar investigations later.
Perhaps once they all agree to calling it "superintelligence", these troubles will go away.
Trump's America’s AI Action Plan[1] already says<p>>“Review all Federal Trade Commission (FTC) investigations commenced under the previous administration to ensure that they do not advance theories of liability that unduly burden AI innovation.”<p>[1] <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americas-AI-Action-Plan.pdf?chain_id=koD7XgKiD556Bq.1kvnr2e&global_content=%7B%22promote_id%22%3A13766%2C%22sub_promote_id%22%3A14%2C%22f%22%3A%22www.futunn.com%2Flearn%2Fdetail-trump-released-the-u-s-ai-action-plan-these-four-major-investment-themes-are-essential-to-know-91481-250791041%22%7D" rel="nofollow">https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Americ...</a>
there's also regulatory capture where regulators get hired by these companies for six-to-seven figure jobs once they're out<p><a href="https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/us-government-regulators-may-be-favoring-their-future-private-sector-employers" rel="nofollow">https://insights.som.yale.edu/insights/us-government-regulat...</a>
That's not an inherently bad practice. I'd much rather there be two way flow between industry and government than have people who have never tried to run a business doing regulation or those who have never worked in government trying to comply with regulations. Strong ethics rules and culture is the way you manage the downside, not bans.
The hell do you work where ethics culture exists in business? I gotta be looking in the wrong places, because all I ever see is lip service granted to ethics until they threaten the bottom line, then suddenly they disappear.
The AI discourse is full of cases where companies and their employees respect ethical boundaries at a cost to their bottom line. There was a famous incident, Project Glasswing, where Anthropic announced that they needed to do a large, collaborative cybersecurity project before they could ethically sell their newest model.<p>Of course, this story also points towards how people sometimes get confused. Most opportunities companies have to be unethical are complex, so if you're not already inclined to trust a company, it's easy to come up with reasons to distrust any claims of ethical behavior they make. Maybe they didn't want to do the unethical behavior in the first place, maybe they've made up self-serving ethical standards, maybe they're just being performatively ethical as a marketing strategy and they'll misbehave when nobody's looking.<p>Such commentary tends to go viral, because it's easy to propose and impossible to refute in a short comment or video.
Things are more corrupt in the US now. That would have worked in Trump 1.0.<p>I predict they’ll be forced to install an “ombudsman” in the data cleaning / training team, so Trump can inject propaganda and filter out science. (As has been done to many US news outlets already).<p>Also, they will somehow each put >> $1B into his personal checking account, and hope presidential pardons cover bribing the president after the next few elections.
This is just how business is done with the government nothing new here or even hidden really.<p>Should this be the way it happens? No<p>Is it? Yes<p>The main thing I’ve seen recently is people learning how the world works then being shocked when it’s nothing like what is sold publicly
I was incredibly more naive and idealistic 2 years ago. Seeing the world more accurately than I did before has been quite the shock
There’s no denying that this administration has taken corruption to a new level
Conversely, you could say that congress has delegated "judicial and legislative" powers to the executive, whose will is embodied in a democratically elected president.<p>"Gail Slater" is not a democratically elected person of any kind, and exists as a function of the executive, and hence of the president's policies. Insofar as the DOJ's anti-trust's leaders depart from the will of the elected president, it is that leader to be fired and replaced. Or else: what ever was the point of electing a president?<p>There's nothing in principle wrong in a president disagreeing with the execution of his executive powers, delegated to Gail, and hence firing him. Indeed, if that were not the case, the election of a president could never change the operation of the executive, making the election pointless.<p>If you disagree with the anti-trust decision, the issue isn't with the political mechanism by which it was over-ruled, but with the election of that president.
My prediction: nothing will come of this, and these investigations will either be concluded favorably or dropped no less than six months after the midterms.<p>There's only one voice that matters in this administration, and he has already made it quite clear that he both does not consider AI to be an issue, and he is more than happy to trample over his agencies to enforce his opinion.
> he has already made it quite clear that he both does not consider AI to be an issue<p>which is putting it <i>very</i> mildly: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824686">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49824686</a>
The problem is that there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Democrats would be doing the exact same thing if they were in power.<p>They will also put up only PR-oriented #resistance, aiming all attacks at Trump (as you have) and ignoring the AI companies themselves.<p>They'll save their criticism for loudmouth AI CEOs that agree to jump out and catch a few bullets (that will bounce off harmlessly, it doesn't matter what the public thinks about them) aimed at Democratic politicians who just voted for something they said that they were against because the Republicans didn't have enough for a majority.<p><i>Loudmouth CEO:</i> "Actually people should be grateful that they're losing their jobs - if they actually loved their jobs, and loved the world, they'd be happy that it was being done better than they ever could, because AI is perfect and guided by us wise, wonderful people."<p><i>Democratic Congressman who just voted to take away a state's ability to stop a data center being built in the middle of a reservoir:</i> "Do you have no shame sir! You give a bad name to the majority of CEOs who are beautiful people who defend us from the inscrutable Chinese hordes. It's thoughtless talk like this that is leading to the rise in subversion among the paranoid terrorists that are emboldening the bullies who show up to city council meetings and anti-data center protests! I'm going to demand that we not award you the 634th no-bid contract that you asked for, and when we are forced to admit that we can't actually cancel that award, I'll ask that you be officially censured by Congress!"
Even worse than whataboutism is <i>hypothetical</i> whataboutism....<p>AI is shaping up to be a major concern amongst the non-tech segment of the population. Some of the arguments are good, some are dumb, but people largely are forming up against AI and datacenters. Yes, you should expect politicians to act on that; it's how the system is meant to work.
Silicon Valley was freaking out last democrat admin because anti trust laws were actually being enforced finally by Lina Khan, I actually completely disagree and I think this admin has been very obviously worse.
Under that framework I could see Anthropic being blocked from IPO-ing. Amodei was just slightly more confrontational than the other players by wanting to stick to their ethics (which is a really low bar). Given Trump is the pettiest person ever and does everything by vibes, I wouldn’t exclude something dramatic, like pushing Amodei out and replacing him with someone he can control better.<p>Just speculating here, there is no way to predict how that will play out
Too conspiratorial to think that they (the AI companies) want to be blocked or at least temporarily delayed from IPO? Finances are too bad to do it but delaying for ambiguous reasons will sink their valuations. Trump can’t let the stock market collapse before the midterms. Hence this whole big safety dog and pony show. Keep the market up until the midterms, then hand off the bag.
Hmm, my instinct is to say that’s too far fetched, but given how corrupt that whole thing is I really don’t know. I would add that to the list of possibilities and reevaluate how plausible that is once we see Anthropic’s 2026 numbers.<p>Though it’s pretty depressing that we can’t just dismiss it directly…
You aren't thinking like a fascist. This will be used as leverage in exchange for midterm or 2028 election help.
What a shame that the focus in the article seems to be on "winning." Seems like winning comes first and safety comes second, and the only question is how far apart they are. That's not surprising, but also not encouraging.
Just a way to pretend like they're doing anything in front of the public. What's there to investigate? Risks are pretty wide open. Crimes have been committed and admitted to.
If the FTC weren't investigating three of the largest and fastest growing companies in the country for one thing or another, it would be kinda surprising to me.
Do we really think that FTC under this administration, which is in bed with top tech billionaires giving gifts for inauguration will do anything against them?<p>Let's not kid ourselves.
All before the midterms: FTC "investigations", 2500 US troops withdrawn from Iraq, SR-71 supposedly reentering service.<p>What about the price of gas?
Antitrust is fake in America
Hey, that's good news. I was hoping it would be the FBI, but the FTC will do.<p>FTC is still mostly not compromised by industry sleeper agents. FBI is still independent also.<p>CAISI NIST is very compromised by EA sleeper agents. very luckily they have no law enforcement role.
Imagine if a car company like Ford or Toyota came out and said their new cars are kind of out of control and they needed special indemnities and protection from liabilities if they want to keep selling cars.
Replace this with Tesla, Waymo, etc and it's not far fetched. It might take a while, but liability is going to need a new legal doctrine to describe why it's not their fault that their car & their code killed someone.
Imagine further that there's actually nothing unusually wrong with the cars at all, but the manufacturers are deliberately playing up perceptions of risk in order to encourage regulatory intervention that they know they can influence and/or work around, but which competing solutions can't.
I mean... there is Boeing, which is arguably more horrifying.<p>With AI it seems to be internal testing produces wild results, which is unsurprising to me, all of these models can be jailbroken, and as long as that's the case, they're all likely to be exploited maliciously.
Not just internal, Anthropic’s S-1 literally covers the risk of ending humanity. They are telling their investors a public company could eradicate humanity. Give us money, the risk you have to evaluate in your financial framework is that we could eliminate humankind.<p>I’m repeating it because that has to be internalized: the largest IPO ever will be for a company that casually consider they might kill us all and their own employees too. Including their children.
Yeah, imagine if pharmaceutical companies did it! Wait...
FTC starting the process of immunizing OpenAI, Anthropic, and a few other well-connected AI companies from liabilities or future prosecutions for any of their fully premeditated actions.
Did a 6(b) response once and the slow part wasn't the documents, it was agreeing internally on what counted as a "safety incident.
"Nice Ai Lab you have here. Would be a shame if anything happened to it."
"Convince us that they are dangerous or you will be fined"
Trump Jr. added as a paid advisor to one, a Kushner to another, and gone are the risks.
This is why they're all swinging on Trump's nuts.<p>When Trump is gone they'll forget about him. If we elect someone far-left next they'll suddenly be mega-woke. Watch.
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These challenges can easily be solved by establishing a Board of SI.
They should be investigating them because of massively selling below cost price.<p>How is this a fair, level, playing field, U.S.? Making a large pile of money to put millions of people out of a job, it warrants some investigations!
Do you have any evidence of this assertion? What is 'cost price' and what is being sold below that?
This is how tons of startups operate, I used to be able to get across the whole city in an Uber for $5, easily quarter of the cost at the time. They undercut taxis until they barely existed then jacked up the prices.<p>VC creates little wars of attrition in every industry and calls it "disruption" but it mostly pulls the money out of workers' pockets.