Lawmakers and antitrust watchdogs are sounding the alarm over Google’s development of advanced AI products – warning the tech giant’s alleged monopoly over online search will only develop into more entrenched without federal intervention.
Within the landmark antitrust trial targeting Google’s search empire, the Justice Department has mostly focused on the corporate’s past tactics.
The feds have argued that Google has spent greater than $10 billion a yr on deals ensuring its search engine is enabled by default on most devices, allowing the corporate to manage a roughly 90% share of the market.
Nevertheless, some critics of Google’s business practices, including Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), indicate that the corporate is already pursuing the subsequent evolution of search in the shape of AI tools comparable to the corporate’s Bard chatbot – a so-called “large language model” that may provide human-like responses to an limitless number of user queries.
Buck said the competition concerns around Google’s business will “absolutely” worsen as Bard and other AI technology is regularly integrated into its omnipresent search engine – unless Congress takes motion.
“If there’s one thing we’ve learned from how Congress legislated in the web space early on, it’s that we’d like to proceed to be involved,” Buck told The Post. “These corporations are very manipulative and excellent at what they do in stopping competition. We want to ensure that we discover those areas and we give regulators the authority to go in.”
When reached for comment, a Google spokeswoman claimed that there’s already a “huge amount of competition and investment in AI each from latest players and existing corporations.”
“Among the world’s leading AI labs like OpenAI and Anthropic began with no proprietary data,” the spokeswoman said. “We provide quite a few tools to assist others innovate and have advanced research by releasing dozens of datasets, from annotated text to pictures to videos and more.”
AI’s looming takeover of online search emerged as a degree of debate on the trial on Oct. 2, when Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella delivered bombshell testimony saying Google’s default deals make the notion of user alternative “completely bogus.”
Microsoft has sought to chip away at Google’s lead by pouring billions into OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, and integrating its AI chatbot into Bing search. Google has argued that Microsoft’s investments in AI are an indication of fierce competition within the sector.
But Nadella downplayed the notion that Microsoft’s investments have meaningfully impacted the search market, where Bing holds a 3% market share in comparison with Google’s 90%.
The Microsoft boss also told the court that AI would lead to “even worse of a nightmare to make progress in search” if Google bolstered its advantage by securing exclusive content deals to support Bard while locking out rivals.
Google said it doesn’t have any such exclusive deals with publishers and asserts that its AI models are primarily trained on publicly available data.
In less-guarded moments, Google CEO Sundar Pichai has pooh-poohed the concept that chatbots from rival corporations would hurt Google’s search business, telling the the Wall Street Journal that the “opportunity space, if anything, is larger than before.”
Pichai personally acknowledged the connection between Bard and the corporate’s long-term ambitions for its search business. Within the April interview with the Journal, Pichai said that AI would “supercharge” Google search, though he didn’t say when the combination might occur.
For now, Bard is labeled as an “experiment” on Google’s website and kept separate from its major search engine.
Users are warned that it’s a work in progress that occasionally spits out false or inaccurate information – comparable to a recent incident wherein Bard said Israel and Hamas had reached a ceasefire following the recent outbreak of war in Gaza, regardless that no such deal had occurred.
Despite Bard’s early hiccups, Luther Lowe, a former top policy executive at Yelp, warned last month that corporations “like Google and Microsoft are already leveraging their existing dominance to manage critical AI applications and data sets” in a way that curbs consumer alternative and tech innovation.
“Google is planning to hardwire Bard into its search engine after an initial beta launch, which implies most Americans will get their first earnest experience of AI through Google search,” Lowe wrote in an op-ed. “The typical user likely won’t recognize that Google has silently made Bard their default chatbot either, stifling competition and innovation from the beginning.”
“In spite of everything, how can any AI startup compete with a chatbot that’s embedded inside any search query made through the world’s most visited website?” he added.
Congressional motion is probably going crucial to properly address the competition concerns around AI, in response to Christine Bartholomew, a professor at University at Buffalo School of Law who focuses on antitrust litigation.
“The danger from AI tools will depend on who uses them. It’s significantly different for Google than for a small start-up to make use of such technology,” Bartholomew said.
“The antitrust laws are broad enough to deal with these dangers,” she added. “Judicial interpretations of such laws, nevertheless, have develop into so narrow that I worry whether existing antitrust jurisprudence will accurately sort through such distinctions.”
Meanwhile, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), one other outspoken Big Tech critic and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, reiterated his long-held view that a breakup of Google is the “only answer” to make sure fair market competition as AI products take hold.
“There’s no online market Google won’t try to beat,” Hawley said in a press release to The Post. “Google has vast reserves of Americans’ personal information, and it’s a small step to make use of that information to coach the corporate’s AI models. In other words: like so many other tech firms, Google’s power is endlessly self-reinforcing.”
While the present federal antitrust trial could have major implications for Google and the remainder of the tech industry, any such consequence is probably going years away. Judge Amit Mehta will first determine whether Google broke antitrust law in a ruling that is just not expected until earlier next yr.
If Google is found to have broken the law, the second trial shall be held to find out a correct treatment – with potential outcomes starting from a forced discontinuation of a few of Google’s business practices to a breakup of the corporate.
“This type of case is a case where latest law could also be made and it might go as much as the Supreme Court and then you definitely’re taking a look at a settlement,” said Buck. “Regardless of the judge does here is de facto the muse for where this case goes to find yourself.”
“I do think that, factually, the federal government has done an excellent job in providing a robust argument,” Buck added.