Safer AI Products Drive Innovation, Says Ex-DOJ Official

Jonathan Kanter ran antitrust enforcement at the Justice Department under President Biden. Now he teaches law at Washington University and technology policy at Carnegie Mellon, and he's the guest for the first installment of a two-part Decoder series on where business is headed next.

The timing works because AI safety has turned into the industry's loudest fight. Researchers at Anthropic and Google DeepMind have resigned publicly, warning that current models carry real risk and that safety work is getting sidelined. Some researchers now put the odds of AI causing catastrophic harm above 10 percent. Meanwhile, the CEOs building these systems keep calling for slower development and tighter rules, including a specific ask: let us get an antitrust exemption so competitors can coordinate on safety without breaking the law.

That request is where things get messy. Critics call it a bid for regulatory capture, a setup for a cartel, or a convenient way to dodge investor pressure right before some of these companies go public. Kanter, who spent years deciding when companies get to cooperate and when that cooperation becomes illegal, has a clear read on whether AI actually needs special treatment.