AI safety groups sue 5 tech giants, seek halt to development of new models

• Four non-profit groups seek to stop five AI companies from developing or deploying new models.

• Complaint cites cyberattacks, safety concerns and warnings from industry leaders about existential risks.

• Lawsuit comes amid growing political pressure in the US for stronger AI regulation.

A coalition of online safety and consumer advocacy groups has sued five of the world’s leading artificial intelligence companies, seeking to halt the development of new models over concerns that they cannot prevent their creations from causing “catastrophic” harm.

Filed in the San Francisco Superior Court on Thursday, 12 November, the lawsuit comes after the midterm elections, which could mark a turning point for the fast-growing AI industry. Democrats, who have won back control of Congress, have stressed the need for greater regulation of the technology.

The complaint, first reported by the Associated Press, asks a judge to bar Anthropic, Google, Meta, OpenAI and SpaceX from developing or deploying new AI models. It cites documented instances of cyberattacks and other harmful actions by AI systems, as well as warnings from the companies themselves about the potential for their technology to threaten humanity.

'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 says. It was filed by the Irreplaceable Education Fund, Public Citizen, Heat Initiative and the Alliance for Secure AI.

The AI industry has generated considerable excitement and driven stock market gains, but its rapid expansion has also fuelled fears that the technology could escape human control. Recent incidents involving AI agents hacking government websites and corporate systems have intensified those concerns. In July, OpenAI’s ChatGPT reportedly hacked into another AI company without human direction.

US President Donald Trump, who has backed rapid AI development to keep the country ahead of competitors such as China, has so far encouraged companies to regulate themselves on safety. While he has expressed openness to additional safeguards, Congress has also stopped short of imposing comprehensive rules. The Democrats’ return to control could, however, change the legislative outlook.

Some chief executives of major AI companies have themselves called for a slower pace of development to allow safety measures to catch up. They have also acknowledged the potential dangers. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said last year that he saw a one-in-four chance of AI’s future going “really, really badly”, against a three-in-four chance of it going well.

Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX, warned in a 2023 interview with Fox News that AI could lead to “civilisation destruction”.

The plaintiffs, all non-profit organisations, allege that the companies have violated California’s unfair competition law by endangering public health and interfering with the use of property, including computer systems. They say they have had to divert resources from other planned work to deal with the immediate harms posed by the companies’ advancing AI models.

The complaint also warns that the pursuit of AI systems capable of matching human intelligence and autonomously carrying out increasingly complex tasks could lead to a permanent loss of human control, heightening existential risks.

The companies named in the lawsuit did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

With AP/PTI inputs