Competition authorities need to move fast and break up AI | Hacker News Reader

Competition authorities need to move fast and break up AI

ft.com

What is the argument for breaking up multiple companies competing at making AI? I doubt that's been done, and certainly falls outside antitrust since none are near monopoly status. Plus the "market" is wholly undefined and fluid.

This article seems detached from what regulators and laws do.

In the past, search engines such as DuckDuckGo have utilized Bing's index, primarily because Microsoft was eager to challenge Google's dominance and welcomed the participation of smaller players.

However, as the linked article suggests, if Microsoft now plans to close off Bing's API (potentially sensing vulnerability in Google), it seems that the influence of monopoly power remains strong and prevalent.

The Bing api doesn't include Bing ai, only index data, have they changed that recently?

No, still only indexed data. But MS now says you can't use an AI to inspect the returned URLs (as if they owned the actual content)

Bing has < 7% market share. There is no monopoly power under any stretch of law there.

And none of them have any kind of AI monopoly, which requires much more single domination of a market (and AI is not a market, but is used in many different markets....).

I am reminded of a couple of articles in the MIT technology review describing AI as the second automation revolution:

"For all the amazing advances in AI and other digital tools over the last decade, their record in improving prosperity and spurring widespread economic growth is discouraging. Although a few investors and entrepreneurs have become very rich, most people haven’t benefited. Some have even been automated out of their jobs."[1]

https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/03/25/1070275/chatgpt-...

"Daron Acemoglu, an MIT economist, provides compelling evidence for the role automation, robots, and algorithms that replace tasks done by human workers have played in slowing wage growth and worsening inequality in the US. In fact, he says, 50 to 70% of the growth in US wage inequality between 1980 and 2016 was caused by automation."[2]

[2] https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/04/19/1049378/ai-inequ...

https://archive.ph/9Scmr

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