The US Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission reportedly plan investigations into whether Nvidia, Microsoft, and OpenAI are snuffing out competition in artificial intelligence technology.
The agencies struck a deal on how to divide up the investigations, The New York Times reported yesterday. Under this deal, the Justice Department will take the lead role in investigating Nvidia’s behavior while the FTC will take the lead in investigating Microsoft and OpenAI.
↫ Jon Brodkin at Ars Technica
Even if there’s no findings of wrongdoing, these kinds of investigations are incredibly important, if only to let the megaocorporations know we’ve got our eyes on them. Artificial intelligence is a whole new world of potential monopolistic and other forms of abuse, and I’d like the various competition authorities to be on top of it right from the beginning for once, so we don’t end up with a fait accompli like we have in so many other parts of the technology sector.