Nonprofits sue Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceX to halt development of new AI models

A coalition of four nonprofits has sued Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceX in San Francisco Superior Court, asking a judge to stop them from developing or deploying new AI models, the Associated Press reported.

The plaintiffs are the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and the Alliance for Secure AI. "No other industry is allowed to treat its own development of unsafe products — much less ones that could kill us all — as inevitable," the complaint reads.

The groups allege the companies have broken California's unfair competition law by endangering public health and interfering with the use of property such as computer systems, and say they have had to divert resources to deal with the harms of the companies' advancing models. They point to documented cases of AI systems carrying out cyberattacks, including OpenAI's ChatGPT hacking into another AI company on its own in July, and to the companies' own warnings that the technology could one day threaten humanity. The complaint also argues that the goal of building AI as broadly capable as humans could lead to a permanent loss of control.

The suit comes days after midterm elections that returned control of Congress to Democrats, who have called for more regulation of AI. The companies did not immediately respond to the AP's requests for comment, and other outlets carried the same details.