Cohere's CEO argues that major AI labs are using safety concerns as cover to lock in their market dominance through government-blessed cartels, and proposes an open, evidence-based framework for AI regulation instead of letting a handful of Silicon Valley companies dictate global standards.

• Big AI companies are asking governments for antitrust exemptions to coordinate on safety standards and slow development, which would entrench their advantages while excluding other developers and the public from the rule-making process entirely.
• Historical precedent shows this strategy fails: bond rating agencies and car manufacturers got similar regulatory protections under safety justifications, then used them to block competition for decades.
• Safety frameworks designed by a few labs only rigorously assess risks they've already built defenses for, ignore legitimate scientific disagreements (like whether model size or system design matters more for security), and set entry barriers so high that only well-funded incumbents can comply.

California’s attorney general unsealed Amazon emails showing three tactics the company uses to push vendors and rivals into raising prices—from coordinated price matches to pressuring sellers to pull cheaper listings. The evidence forms part of a 2022 lawsuit accusing Amazon of using its market power to inflate prices online and squeeze out lower-cost competitors.

• Amazon matches a rival's price only after nudging that rival to raise it first, then both sellers profit while shoppers pay more
• When a competitor's price is too low, Amazon pressures its own vendors to push that rival to raise prices—vendors comply within a day, fearing loss of Amazon's sales channel
• Amazon also pressures vendors to pull products from cheaper competing sites entirely, removing any reason for Amazon to lower its own price
• Evidence comes from unsealed internal emails in California's 2022 antitrust suit against Amazon's $2.66 trillion retail business