According to reports in the New York Times the US Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission have reached a deal whereby they will be taking responsibility for separate investigations into these three major AI companies.
The agreement, due to be completed in the next few days, is expected to see DoJ take the lead in investigating Nvidia. The company has a dominant share – over 80 per cent – of the chips used to drive AI and recently overtook Apple to become the world’s second most valuable company after Microsoft.
The FTC will be given the task of examining OpenAI, maker of the ChatGPT chatbot, which has received billions of dollars of investment and support from Microsoft, which owns 49% of its shares.
These moves come at a time of growing concern over these companies’ dominance within the AI space. There are also issues about weak industrial oversight of the sector and of the implications AI could have for the wider economy and employment.
The announcement is certainly significant and shows that the booming AI industry faces is set to face growing regulatory scrutiny.
Recently, US antitrust chief Jonathan Kanter told a conference that, “there are structures and trends in AI that should give us pause’” and he warned that with AI relying on massive amounts of data and computing power, “this can give already-dominant firms a substantial advantage.”
It’s a significant move on the part of the authorities.
