OpenAI has asked members of Congress whether an industry-wide slowdown in frontier AI development would be legal. People close to the company described the approach to WIRED. Lawyers have warned that labs agreeing to pause could count as restricting output under US competition law. Jakub Pachocki, OpenAI's chief scientist, argued in a blog post that labs should coordinate to slow future development. He expects voluntary slowdowns until shared safety thresholds exist. A bipartisan bill introduced in July would let labs coordinate on safety and security without antitrust risk. The House version sits with the Judiciary Committee and has not been taken up. Caleb Knapp of the AI Policy Network says any law may wait until after the midterm elections. Some AI leaders call the antitrust concern a cover for commercial rivalry. John Schulman, an OpenAI cofounder now at Thinking Machines, called the antitrust argument fake.

• bill introduced July 2026