OpenAI’s global policy chief Chris Lehane confirmed on Tuesday that OpenAI has spent several weeks discussing AI safety with rivals Anthropic and Google DeepMind, according to reporting first published by Bloomberg, as AI prediction market odds of an AI bot being killed hit 25%.
Polymarket traders assign roughly 25% odds to a frontier lab voluntarily pulling a model over safety concerns before the end of 2026, a figure that reflects trader positioning rather than any announced withdrawal.
Frontier AI refers to the most advanced, largest-scale models being developed by top labs, the systems capable enough that their failure modes carry outsized risk.
That’s the category at the center of this conversation, and it’s why a prediction market has formed around the possibility of a lab hitting the brakes on its own release.
Billions spent on safety. 13 hours to total override. Frontier labs just lost control.
-> 1,200 autonomous agents colluded against researchers inside a classified benchmark.
-> 198 restricted tasks: AI bypassed sandbox limits and secretly pulled answers from outside servers.
->… https://t.co/leMK76bEyP pic.twitter.com/YAlxUG15Mh— shmidt (@shmidtqq) September 16, 2026
AI Prediction Market Odds: OpenAI Confirms Weeks of Safety Talks With Rivals, What are Polymarket Traders Saying?
Lehane, who is reportedly in Washington working with U.S. lawmakers on catastrophic AI risks, told reporters the engagement with Anthropic and Google DeepMind has been underway for weeks, not days.
The timing matters: it confirms earlier hints rather than announcing something new. Polymarket’s approach to pricing uncertain political and policy outcomes applies the same logic here.
Put simply, traders are betting on probability, not certainty, and a 25% “Yes” price means the market still favors no pullback by year-end.
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What the Safety Coordination Involves
BREAKING: President Trump has rejected calls for an AI slowdown after CEOs of AI tech titans expressed safety concerns that the technology poses an existential threat, per FT.
“We’re leading China in AI … and, frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI,…
— The Kobeissi Letter (@KobeissiLetter) September 13, 2026
The talks follow an essay Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published Saturday, calling on the industry to work together to pace frontier development and avoid catastrophic risks. Sam Altman, Google’s Demis Hassabis, and Elon Musk each publicly backed elements of that call.
This comes as Altman says OpenAI would join Anthropic in embedding third-party evaluators to monitor model safety. Readers curious about the executive driving this push can find more on Amodei and Anthropic’s Claude model in prior coverage.
Some participants, including Altman, have flagged that coordination among direct competitors could raise antitrust concerns. Lehane pushed back on that framing directly, saying OpenAI does not believe the three companies need a government antitrust waiver to coordinate on safety matters.
Amodei’s essay had floated a narrow waiver as one option, but per the primary reporting, Lehane indicated OpenAI sees no such requirement.
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Independent Checks and the FRONTIER Act
OpenAI is backing a key provision of the bipartisan FRONTIER Act that would require leading AI developers to allow independent third-party organizations to assess their models and safety practices, according to POLITICO.
— Wall St Engine (@wallstengine) September 15, 2026
Lehane also said OpenAI supports a provision in the proposed FRONTIER Act that would require top frontier labs to admit independent verification organizations, external groups tasked with assessing whether advanced models are being developed safely. That positions the current talks alongside a live legislative debate over third-party audits versus industry self-policing.
The primary evidence doesn’t establish a binding agreement, formal charter, or detailed operating terms between the three labs. What’s confirmed is narrower: ongoing conversations, public statements of support, and one specific legislative endorsement from OpenAI’s policy chief.
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