Should We Slow Down AI? Antitrust Law May Have A Say

​This session, featuring Professor Jon Festinger from the Peter A. Allard School of Law, examines the debate over whether AI development should be slowed and what role antitrust law plays.

​As AI systems grow more capable and are deployed more widely, calls to slow down have moved from the margins into mainstream policy discussion. Any coordinated slowdown among competing developers raises questions under antitrust law, and the race to build complicates whether safety can be achieved at all. This discussion will explore:

• ​Whether competition law applies when AI developers coordinate to slow development

• ​The enforcement challenges created by international competition and industry incentives

• ​How safety and competition concerns could coexist in AI governance

​The reading group brings together UBC students from all academic levels with faculty members to engage collectively with scholarship in AI policy. No prior technical or policy background is required.

​Jon Festinger, K.C. is an Adjunct Professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia, where he is one of the school’s longest-serving adjunct faculty. He has taught media, entertainment, communications, and corporate law for decades, and currently teaches courses including AI & Law and Business Organizations. A graduate of McGill University’s Faculty of Law, he practices and consults through Festinger Law & Strategy. He served as National Chair of the Canadian Bar Association’s Media and Communications Law Section from 1993 to 1995 and as a Director of the British Columbia Association of Broadcasters from 1997 to 2000. He is the author of Video Game Law (LexisNexis, 2005) and guest edited the UBC Law Review special issue “Digital Media, Video Games, and the Law” (2013). In February 2026, he gave a guest talk at Allard titled “A.I. & Social Media: Eighteen Questions.”