The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have reached an agreement that permits them to move forward with investigations into the dominant positions that tech companies including OpenAI, Microsoft, and NVIDIA hold in the artificial intelligence (AI) industry.
United States antitrust enforcer, Jonathan Kanter, confirmed the agreement in a statement on Thursday.
Kanter claims that to prevent the already powerful tech companies from controlling the entire market, the AI industry needs to take immediate action. According to him, authorities worry that artificial intelligence is “at the high-water mark of competition, not the floor.”
The recent breakthrough is a major step towards demonstrating the regulatory examination of artificial intelligence’s great influence.
According to the Times, the new deal will enable the Justice Department to assume charge of the inquiry into Nvidia’s actions and determine whether the largest manufacturer of A.I. chips has broken any antitrust regulations.
Regulators are concerned that the nascent AI sector is “at the high-water mark of competition, not the floor” and must act “with urgency” to ensure that already-dominant tech companies do not control the market, Kanter said.
“Sometimes the most meaningful intervention is when the intervention is in real-time,” he added. “The beauty of that is you can be less invasive.”
According to a report citing people familiar with the situation, the Justice Department will investigate whether the now $3 trillion chipmaker Nvidia has violated antitrust rules with its actions.
The FTC will lead the investigation against OpenAI and its partner Microsoft. Indeed, as the Wall Street Journal revealed on Thursday, the FTC has already served Microsoft subpoenas to investigate the company’s recent acquisition of AI startup Inflection AI.
We earlier reported that a group filed a formal complaint alleging that Microsoft education software which is extensively used in schools around Europe, is probably tracking students.
