Decoder with Nilay Patel · Saturday, September 19, 2026
Jonathan Kanter asserts that major AI companies do not require antitrust exemptions to coordinate on safety. He uses analogies of industrial accidents, like doors falling off planes or exploding cars, to argue that companies have an inherent responsibility to build safe products and should be held liable for failures, rather than relying on group coordination.
“Let me just be very clear. These companies do not need to coordinate in order to deliver safe and secure products to society.”
“If doors are falling off the plane, it wasn't Airbus's fault and they didn't need to slow down innovation with Airbus in order to prevent those doors from flying off the plane. They needed to figure out how to build planes that were safer.”
“You need to have a responsibility to build safe and secure products, and companies should be held liable when their agents, whether those agents are digital, um, in binary, or whether those agents are human, um, if they start doing bad things, the company that employs them can and should be held responsible.”