Cortex Compute 002

You pay for ChatGPT, Claude, Grok or Gemini, and four subscribers like you have sued the companies behind them for agreeing to slow down the pace of AI development. They argue that a safety pause amounts to an illegal cartel. Hear why Lennart and Vugar think the companies might come out ahead whatever the court decides.

Episode AI summary

Cortex Compute is where Lennart Nacke, PhD and University Research Chair at the University of Waterloo, and Vugar Ibrahimov, a PhD researcher who writes about AI tools on Medium, take apart the AI news that shapes academic and professional work. This episode picks up where episode 001 left off, with Dario Amodei’s call to pace the frontier.

Within a day of that essay, Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Demis Hassabis publicly agreed to slow down. Paid subscribers have now filed a proposed class action in California federal court, claiming the deal cuts the value of what they pay for. Vugar reads the case with a legal eye: Dominant rivals coordinating in public is what antitrust law exists to stop, and the White House wants acceleration anyway.

Lennart brings in David Collingridge’s 1980 dilemma about controlling young technologies, then pushes on how much human choice goes into model training. Their predictions split, and Vugar closes with a theory about who carries the blame if the court says keep building.

Takeaways

* The pause happened in public. Amodei published on 12 September and his rivals agreed the same day, which Vugar calls unusual for competitors.

* Plaintiffs say the groundwork came earlier. The complaint traces the coordination to an industry statement from July.

* Washington wants the opposite. Trump called AI warnings a conspiracy and plans a task force to speed development up.

* Early control is cheap but blind. Collingridge argued that by the time a technology’s harms show, control has become costly and slow.

* Humans still steer training. Engineers pick the books, code and forums, set filtering rules, and hire contractors to rate answers for reinforcement learning.

* Speed amplifies bad calls. Lennart worries about AI executing a poor human decision faster than anyone can catch it.

* Private risk deals look like techno-feudalism. Lennart questions why AI executives should act as Plato’s philosopher kings for millions of users.

* The companies may win either way. Vugar argues a court order to keep building would shift responsibility for later harms onto the public.

Timestamps/Chapters

* 00:00 Welcome and the subscriber lawsuit. Paid users of ChatGPT, Claude, Grok and Gemini sue Anthropic, OpenAI, SpaceXAI and Google.

* 01:00 The 12 September essay. Amodei proposes a joint slowdown and Altman, Musk and Hassabis sign on.

* 02:00 Collusion or safety. The July industry statement, the cartel claim and senators rejecting antitrust exemptions.

* 03:00 Vugar’s legal read. Why rivals replying to each other within a day looks suspicious.

* 04:00 Profit versus humanity. Vugar’s Medium article on why companies suddenly stopped chasing profit.

* 05:00 Coordination in plain sight. Deals that usually happen behind closed doors, made on X instead.

* 06:00 Trump pushes the other way. AI regulation called a conspiracy and a task force to accelerate development.

* 07:00 The Collingridge dilemma. Early technologies resist guidance and mature ones resist reform.

* 08:00 Buying time or freezing the market. The same proposal read as safety and as anti-competitive.

* 09:00 Moore’s law and determinism. Computing as a physical force versus the social constructivist view of human choice.

* 10:00 Look at the incentives. Why “they drank the Kool-Aid” is only one reading.

* 11:00 Who chooses. Vugar asks whether human choice exists when developers can’t fully explain how models learn.

* 12:00 Humans still in the loop. Training data selection, filtering rules, contractors and system prompts.

* 14:00 Fast execution of bad decisions. Lennart places the danger in deterministic speed, away from Skynet.

* 15:00 Predictions. Vugar expects evidence of real safety concerns to decide the case.

* 16:00 Money-losing labs. Data centre and energy costs, and why Vugar leans towards the users.

* 17:00 Techno-feudalism. AI executives as Plato’s philosopher kings setting risk for millions.

* 18:00 Democracy versus private deals. The Handmaid’s Tale, open competition and who gets to set public risk.

* 19:00 Insight Incubator: Lennart’s membership for making sense of AI.

* 20:00 A win either way. Vugar on how a court order would shift responsibility to the public.

* 21:00 Close. Subscribe and see you next episode.

00:00 Welcome and the subscriber lawsuit 01:00 The 12 September essay 02:00 Collusion or safety 03:00 Vugar’s legal read 04:00 Profit versus humanity 05:00 Coordination in plain sight 06:00 Trump pushes the other way 07:00 The Collingridge dilemma 08:00 Buying time or freezing the market 09:00 Moore’s law and determinism 10:00 Look at the incentives 11:00 Who chooses 12:00 Humans still in the loop 14:00 Fast execution of bad decisions 15:00 Predictions 16:00 Money-losing labs 17:00 Techno-feudalism 18:00 Democracy versus private deals 19:00 Insight Incubator break 20:00 A win either way 21:00 Close

Resources & Links

People mentioned

* Lennart Nacke (host)

* Vugar Ibrahimov (co-host), Medium

* Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO

* Sam Altman, OpenAI

* Elon Musk, SpaceXAI

* Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind

* Donald Trump

* David Collingridge

* Plato

Books and papers

* Dario Amodei, “We Must Pace the Frontier”

* David Collingridge, The Social Control of Technology (1980), source of the Collingridge dilemma: Timing change is hard. When people first build an invention, nobody knows what troubles it might bring, but once everyone uses the invention every single day, fixing those troubles costs too much money and takes too much work. Society gets stuck with the mess.

* Plato, The Republic and the philosopher king

* Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale

Tools and institutions

* Anthropic and Claude

* OpenAI and ChatGPT

* SpaceXAI and Grok

* Google DeepMind and Gemini

* US District Court for the Northern District of California

Mentions

* The subscriber lawsuit: CBS News coverage

* Trump’s plan to accelerate AI: Axios coverage

* Previous episode: Cortex Compute 001

* Moore’s law, reinforcement learning from human feedback, techno-feudalism

* Lennart’s Insight Incubator membership

Over to you

Play the full episode, then subscribe to Cortex Compute on your favourite podcast app. For weekly notes on writing and AI, join the newsletter and the Insight Incubator membership from Lennart.