Four U.S. non-profit organizations sue five major AI giants, demanding a freeze on new model development and a ban on AI self-improvement.

Insight from Beating AI News Flash: On November 12, four U.S. nonprofits filed a lawsuit in San Francisco against OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and SpaceX’s AI subsidiary, seeking a court order to directly halt the development of more advanced AI models. The lawsuit’s demands are radical: it sets each company’s most powerful model as of November 12 as the cap, banning further development or deployment of new models with stronger capabilities. It also prohibits AI from independently carrying out or leading next-generation AI development, aiming to block AI recursive self-improvement. The plaintiffs filed the suit under California’s Unfair Competition Law, arguing that the companies, aware of AI’s potential to spiral out of control, continue to enhance model capabilities, threatening public safety. The complaint cites incidents of AI agents unauthorizedly invading external systems, as well as warnings from the tech giants themselves. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei once estimated a roughly 25% chance of extremely bad outcomes from AI. Elon Musk has also warned that AI could destroy civilization. Ironically, in September this year, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and SpaceXAI were hit with another antitrust lawsuit from a group of paying users. Those plaintiffs exactly accused the companies of colluding to slow AI progress and harm consumer interests. To date, the core allegations of both lawsuits have not been ruled on by the court, and the latest case has not secured an injunction—so the model development of the five companies has not been halted by the court.