Ravneet Kaur, the Chairperson of the Competition Commission of India (CCI), has alluded to the fact that artificial intelligence (AI) can be in the form of “cartels without human communication.”
As AI continues revolutionizing industries worldwide, it enables companies to optimize processes, enhance customer experiences, and drive innovation.
But while AI’s role in the economy expands, concerns about its unintended consequences are expanding too. One huge problem is AI’s ability to enable collusion between companies without involving humans.
Kaur warns that algorithms can secretly conspire through anti-competitive practices such as price-fixing and market division, regardless of whether companies do so openly.
Traditional regulatory mechanisms cannot deal with such markets. In an era where this can occur, competition can take a digital form, and thus, regulators must revolutionize their competition regulatory toolkit.
Conversely, Kaur is calling for forward-thinking regulation to level the playing field for AI markets. Regulators are experiencing similar issues everywhere, so it is important to be transparent and creative when it comes to regulating how AI is revolutionizing the economy.
Future-ready and trustworthy regulations matter because they ensure stability and growth
CCI Chairperson Ravneet Kaur called for anticipatory regulation to address future challenges, highlighting that AI markets will create issues in addition to those we have now.
Laws passed that rely on seeming inter-human agreements are unlikely to work because AI technologies mostly only communicate with one another.
Secondly, and similarly daunting, is making AI-driven decision-making transparent and understandable. Most artificial intelligence systems are “black boxes,” and how they think is not self-disclosing.
Regulators will require more open-book accounting of AI algorithms so companies can bring their algorithm-heavy competition and pricing schemes out of the shadows. This would enable the authorities to distinguish the legitimate AI-enabled productivity of this case from the collusive malice.
Consumer protection law also needs to keep pace with AI development. Often, regulators whose job is to protect consumers hear about this new technology, even as it is a regulator’s job to ensure consumers can see fair systems and keep prices open and not shaped through prejudiced AI. Where they do so, the law can require companies to disclose how much their AI determines prices and whether people receive different prices for the same products or services.
Kaur’s appeal for proactive regulation resonates with a growing consensus among global competition authorities. Regulators worldwide are seeing that they need to revamp their enforcement approaches to match the breakneck development speed of AI technologies.
In the U.S., the DOJ is ramping up its antitrust enforcement under AAG Abigail Slater. Under its new leadership, it has created a seasoned team to take on competition issues across various industries, including those impacted by AI-fueled business practices.
This reflects a growing push to ensure that companies using artificial intelligence do so in ways that do not undermine market fairness.
European regulators are stepping up their focus on the effects of artificial intelligence competition, as well. The European Commission has investigated how algorithms used in AI manipulate pricing and market conditions and called out the need for transparency and accountability.
The DMA and DSA will create a level playing field for large tech companies and safeguard consumers so that powerful AI doesn’t harm smaller businesses or the buying public.
The challenge for regulators is detecting AI-powered collusion and intervening without stifling innovation. Artificial intelligence is a sophisticated tool that can drive economic growth, and overregulation would prevent businesses from deploying beneficial AI technologies. So, the trick is to incentivize innovation without stifling competition.
One possible avenue is the creation of competition guidelines, whereby important economies agree to shared principles regarding the use of artificial intelligence in their market.
Such guiding principles ensure that businesses have a fair opportunity to operate internationally across the many different market infrastructures to help mitigate the potential for widespread regulatory inconsistency that companies could exploit.
Brad Smith, Microsoft’s president, argued that the industry should play a large role in writing the rules regarding artificial intelligence regulation. Microsoft was one of seven companies that signed voluntary safety guidelines released by the White House.
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