Justice Department and Stanford University to Cohost Workshop “Promoting Competition in Artificial Intelligence”

The Justice Department and Stanford University will hold a public workshop on May 30 to discuss the state of competition across the Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology industry from the chip to the app.

“The Antitrust Division is excited to partner with Stanford University on this workshop to learn from stakeholders at various levels of the AI stack who are all adapting to the fast-paced developments in AI,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “We look forward to hearing about how competition is developing, bottlenecks and other challenges established firms and new entrants are facing and how AI is affecting the authors, musicians, artists and other content creators that drive creativity and innovation in our economy.”

The Justice Department’s Antitrust Division, Stanford Graduate School of Business and Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research will cohost the free full-day workshop to discuss competition and AI industry structure, including competition in AI models, semiconductors, the cloud and AI applications. The workshop will be livestreamed from 9 a.m. PT to 6:00 p.m. PT. A recording of the workshop will be available on Stanford’s event page after the workshop. An agenda and a list of speakers will be available in the near future on the Antitrust Division’s event page and Stanford’s event page. Members of the public should register on Stanford’s event page and members of the press should send a copy of their registration confirmation to Julia.Hartnett@usdoj.gov on their registration email.

In a series of panels, presentations and remarks, government and industry representatives, academics from both law and business, content creators, inventors and other tech industry stakeholders will explore how competition at one level of the AI stack affects other AI technologies, how standards and accountability systems can be designed to promote competition and the challenges AI poses to content creators. The workshop also will explore how competition affects the funding decisions of investors and the practical considerations that investors face when evaluating whether to invest in startups.

The Justice Department invites comments from the public on the topics covered by this workshop. Interested parties may submit public comments online now through July 15 at ATR.2024AIworkshop@usdoj.gov.