FTC Chair Khan to crack down on 'several risks' from AI
Shutthiphong Chandaeng
Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan on Wednesday signaled that her organization could soon take a more-active role in ensuring that the rise of artificial intelligence doesn't violate U.S. consumer protection and antitrust laws.
Khan made her sentiments known in a guest essay in the New York Times. Among the topics Khan addressed in the "rapidly developing A.I. sector" were business collusion, monopolization, price discrimination and "unfair methods of competition."
"We can already see several risks," Khan wrote. "The expanding adoption of A.I. risks further locking in the market dominance of large incumbent technology firms."
Khan said that as companies "race to deploy and monetize AI" the FTC would be "taking a close look" at how it can achieve its mandate of promoting fair competition and protecting Americans from what she said were "unfair or deceptive practices" among businesses.
AI has been the hot topic in the tech sector since late 2022, and interest gained steam when Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) invested billions of dollars and threw its weight behind supporting ChatGPT developer Open AI. Since then, practically every major tech company, including Google (NASDAQ:GOOG), Facebook's Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META), Nvidia (NVDA) and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) have given more insight into their AI efforts and support for developing AI technologies.
Khan likened the current state of the AI market to how data privacy became a central tenet of concern following the rise of companies like Meta (META) and Google (GOOG) and how they "came to forever change communications" and created implications for the industry that took years to realize and address.
"AI tools are being trained on huge troves of data in ways that are largely unchecked," Khan said. "These tools can also be trained on private emails, chats and sensitive data, ultimately exposing personal details and violating user privacy." Khan said the FTC is "well equipped" to tackle the issues brought up by the rise of AI.
"We will look not just at the fly-by-night scammers" deploying improper AI tools, Khan said. "But also at the upstream firms that are enabling them."
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