- OpenAI, Google executives lobby for regulators to step aside
- Antitrust enforcers pledge close scrutiny of AI partnerships
Artificial intelligence could help cure cancer, ease energy insecurity and reduce poverty – if regulators would just get out of the way.
That was the message from executives with venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, OpenAI and Alphabet Inc.’s Google at an event in Washington on the sidelines of the world’s largest antitrust conference.
Regulators need to “be careful not to fight the last war,” Google’s top lawyer Kent Walker said. “The stakes here are too important to fall victim to partisan politics.”
Across the street at the main event, however, antitrust enforcers were less convinced of the need to step back. Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan said technology companies have sought to “dazzle” policymakers with the possibilities of AI, but regulators aren’t taking a hands-off approach.
“There’s no exemption from the laws prohibiting collusion, laws prohibiting price fixing, laws prohibiting monopolization, the laws prohibiting fraud,” Khan said Friday. “The FTC is going to take action.”
Antitrust enforcers across the world have become concerned that many of the most promising AI startups depend heavily on the dominant tech companies for their financing and infrastructure needs. Regulators worry that companies like Microsoft Corp., Google, and Amazon.com Inc. are tying themselves to promising startups to ensure they remain on top — much like the