EVENT RECAP:
AI and the Public Interest
How Competition Policy Can Help Protect Democracy,
Safety, Property, and Innovation
On November 15, Open Markets Institute and AI Now Institute convened leading experts from the United States and Europe for a wide-ranging discussion about the promise, threats, and regulatory challenges of large scale artificial intelligence (AI).
A video recap of these discussions is above and on our YouTube channel. You can view the entire event on YouTube or on our website.
Two short days after our event, AI topped headlines after OpenAI’s board fired then later reinstated its CEO, Sam Altman. One of our event panelists, New York Times columnist Julia Angwin wrote that the “ultimate coup” (referencing Altman’s initial ouster), would be “taking back the power of computation on behalf of the public,” and cited a new Open Markets report on how to do it: “AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat.” Also see
Courtney Radsch’s piece in The Guardian, “The real story of the OpenAI debacle is the tyranny of big tech.”
At our event on the 15th, Open Markets Europe Director Max von Thun shared the findings from that new report, which details how just a handful of Big Tech companies – by exploiting existing monopoly power and aggressively co-opting other actors – have already positioned themselves to control the future of artificial intelligence and exacerbate many of the problems of the digital age, including dangerous control of and choke points in information, knowledge, computing power, and more.
Event partner and AI Now Institute Managing Director Sarah Myers West shared similar reporting from AI Now: “Today’s AI boom is driven at its core by commercial surveillance…and shaped by a small handful of firms,” she cautioned.
Biden Administration antitrust officials, including FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya and Doha Mekki, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Department of Justice Antitrust Division, both spoke to the concerns that existing tech monopolies have a “leg up” in AI because of their vast access to data and cloud computing capabilities.
Member of the European Parliament and competition policy expert Andreas Schwab, who led implementation of Europe’s Digital Markets Act, stressed today’s existing competition and data privacy tools apply to AI and we should use them immediately. Many of our November 15th speakers - as well as the literature from Open Markets and AI Now - delivered a similar message that existing competition policy presents a range of viable solutions.
As with many Open Markets events, our first event on AI put big tech companies and the broader public on notice that officials are attuned to how control over our markets and information is captured by a few dominant corporations, and they increasingly agree on using competition policy to correct it.
We addressed industry-driven AI narratives distracting from deeper discussions about existing and near-term problems. This landscape discussion featured Financial Times Global Business Columnist Rana Foroohar, Computer Scientist Laura Edelson, and former Special Assistant to President for Tech and Competition Policy, Tim Wu, and was moderated by AI Now’s Amba Kak. They urged policymakers to focus on ways to make AI technology better and safer for the public now, rather than focus on far-off, existential “Terminator scenarios.”
Dangerous Speech Project Founder and Director Susan Benesch noted that the platform monopolies’ failures will be acutely evident over the next year, as dozens of nations hold crucial elections. The Free Press’s Senior Counsel, Nora Benavidez, expounded on that point by explaining how artificial intelligence is exacerbating misinformation, particularly amidst global conflicts.
Suresh Venkatasubramanian, Director of the Center for Tech Responsibility and one of the drafters of the White House’s Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, warned about discrimination in automated decision-making and noted that the new White House Executive Order on AI lays the groundwork for testing AI models for such harms before they are launched.
We heard from musician Ashley Irwin, actors’ rights advocate Jen Jacobsen, journalist Liz Pelly, and prominent labor leader, head of UNI Global Union Christy Hoffman, about making AI fair for workers, writers, artists, and other creators through transparency and consent, access to fair compensation, and a true seat at the table.
A panel of competition policy experts covered how nondiscrimination rules that have long underpinned monopoly law should be used to address the severe manipulation of businesses and individuals by tech platforms.
Zephyr Teachout, a professor of law and special advisor to New York Attorney General Letitia James, said the use of personalized data by Big Tech companies to manipulate users into staying on their platform is a fundamental discrimination practice.
Open Markets Executive Director Barry Lynn stressed that non-discrimination policy should come first and lay the groundwork for other antimonopoly measures.
Karina Montoya, a reporter at the Open Markets’ Center for Journalism and Liberty, delved into the FTC’s recent lawsuit against Amazon, noting that an FTC win could throw the tech giant’s entire, discrimination-driven business model into question.
Our final panel covered “quick fixes,” or the actions governments can take right now to break chokepoints, reign in abusive business models and behavior, protect property, and preserve democracy.
Max von Thun advocated for reforms like "structural separation of AI companies" and restrictions such as "limiting how data is used across services owned by AI companies."
Sarah Myers West argued we need to "contest the notion that more data leads to better AI" and proposed technical interventions like "mandating multi-cloud interoperability."
Ben Wiseman, Associate Director of the Division of Privacy & Identity Protection at the FTC, said "comprehensive privacy legislation" is urgently needed, as are more resources for regulatory agencies, like the FTC, to properly oversee the operations of AI companies and the usage of user data.
Courtney Radsch, Director for the Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets noted "there is a narrow conception of risk when talking about AI" that fails to account for "the risk to labor." The fixes for which include appropriate copyright protections, for which Courtney and the Center for Journalism & Liberty at Open Markets have appealed to the U.S. government.
AI Now Executive Director Amba Kak closed the day appropriately: “Concentration of power analysis is crucial” to the world’s AI endeavors, she said. She is exactly right.
