Report | AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat

Big Tech is already positioned to control the future of AI and exacerbate existing problems of the digital age  

Competition policy, rigorously applied to AI, will ensure AI benefits the public, not just large corporations  

The Open Markets Institute and the Center for Journalism and Liberty at Open Markets on November 15, 2023, published a major new report, “AI in the Public Interest: Confronting the Monopoly Threat.” The report shows how just a handful of Big Tech companies – by exploiting existing monopoly power and aggressively co-opting other actors – have already positioned themselves to control the future of artificial intelligence and magnify many of the worst problems of the digital age.  

These problems include the spread of misinformation and distortion of political debate, the decline of news and journalism, the undermining of compensation for creative work, exploitation of workers and consumers, monopolistic abuse of smaller businesses and challengers, amplified surveillance advertising and online addiction, and the threat to resilience and security from extreme concentration. 

With this report, we seek to bring together two debates that have largely been kept separate thus far: the promise and perils of generative AI, and of the harms of monopoly power in the digital age. 

Our report examines how existing antitrust, competition and other laws can be wielded to correct these problems and ensure AI works in the public interest, and helps to strengthen democracy, rather than chip away at it.  

The report urges regulators to establish a clear hierarchy of goals for regulatory action, given limited resources, with a focus on threats to individual liberty and democratic institutions. It recommends making use of existing laws first where possible, and only investing in new legislation and regulatory institutions where strictly necessary.  

The report proposes a number of immediate actions to tackle monopoly power in AI, including: 

• Banning all discrimination by powerful gatekeeper platforms in the delivery of essential services to individuals and businesses; 

• Recognizing cloud computing as an essential infrastructure, separating ownership and control from the largest gatekeeper platforms, and regulating it as a public utility; 

• Recognizing that any data collected by large platforms in their capacities as essential services is public in nature, and establishing a public-interest regime to govern access; 

• Aggressively enforcing copyright laws to protect the properties of authors, creators, and other independent publishers from misappropriation and misuse by gatekeeper corporations; 

• Reversing gatekeeper efforts to control AI development through mergers, investments and partnerships and block similar deals in future. 

“The real and urgent harms posed by AI cannot be fully understood or addressed without bringing to the forefront of the debate the existing monopoly power of corporations such as Google, Microsoft, and Amazon, as well as the well-developed debate and many already existing tools and proposals to address their power and behavior,” the report reads.  

 
In recent years, thanks to a revolution in antimonopoly lawmaking in Europe and in antitrust law enforcement in the United States, governments have begun to correct the grave imbalances in power and incentives that have undermined our collective ability to communicate reliably, solve pressing problems, and prosper fairly as a society.  But this work is far from done, and the advent of AI makes it all that much more urgent to complete the job.