Artificial Intelligence

Judge Amit Mehta’s remedies for Google’s search monopoly stopped short of banning payments for default search placement, reflecting the hope that generative AI will erode the power of traditional search. Cristian Santesteban argues the opposite: in the AI era of search, defaults may matter more by steering critical data and learning signals from AI-powered search sessions to the most dominant product. This mechanism can potentially compound Google’s advantage.

The EU’s proposed Digital Omnibus to simplify digital regulation suggests repealing the 2019 Platform-to-Business Regulation. This poses a problem for the Digital Markets Act, which relies on the P2B-Regulation for how to define core platform services like search engines. Moving forward with the repeal will require legislators to renegotiate first the DMA, which is necessary anyways to adapt the law to the age of artificial intelligence, writes Jan-Frederick Göhsl.

In new experimental research, Amit Zac and Michal Gal find that users who use artificial intelligence chatbots to conduct online shopping are being directed to established brands at higher prices without a clear improvement in quality. The logic of AI algorithms risks consolidating markets around established firms while reducing consumer welfare for shoppers.

Alexandros Kazimirov discusses how Nvidia’s quasi-merger with Groq resembles a familiar pattern of regulatory evasion that Google, Microsoft, and Amazon have adopted with emerging artificial intelligence companies. He notes that his proposed remedy that was available to antitrust enforcers in the large language model market is not applicable to chip manufacturers like Nvidia.

In recent research, Brian Broughman, Matthew Wansley, and Samuel Weinstein examine how startups are changing their traditional exit strategies in response to more stringent antitrust enforcement. Many startups are adopting alternative strategies to stay private longer, ultimately raising new questions for competition policy. 

States are beginning to impose idiosyncratic rules on artificial intelligence chatbots and other offerings in response to harms to consumers. Rather than create a...

Eli Orbach examines how the United States’s decentralized education system impedes the diffusion and adoption of generative artificial intelligence in K-12 schools. Slow and uneven diffusion will exacerbate current socioeconomic inequalities, harm students’ future work prospects, and impede macroeconomic growth and productivity.

Crypto assets and social media are changing how finance operates. Uncertainty around the future of AI is affecting financial markets. Claudia Biancotti argues that regulators must expand their range of expertise and pursue a multidisciplinary approach to protecting society against the potential negative spillovers from these developments.

In new research, Filippo Lancieri, Laura Edelson, and Stefan Bechtold explore how the political economy of artificial intelligence regulation is shaped by the strategic behavior of governments, technology companies, and other agents.

Recent government wins against Big Tech demonstrate the prudence of proactively stopping consolidation in the emerging AI startup ecosystem to prevent harm to innovation and consumers. OpenAI’s recent acquisition of Windsurf raises these competition concerns. The antitrust agencies should block it.