CounterPunch - It’s Not Too Late to Stop the Monopolization of AI

Senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley and Europe director Max von Thun co-author an article warning that the monopolization of AI by a few powerful corporations threatens innovation and democracy, urging immediate action to regulate and democratize the technology for the public good.

Artificial intelligence has dominated the news cycle and captured a big chunk of the public’s attention since the release of ChatGPT in 2022.

Hardly a minute goes by without a news story covering AI-related developments, some company releasing a new product “integrated with AI,” or a commentator evoking the threat AI poses to our society.

While there is a lot of unwarranted hype surrounding the technology, recent advances in AI are impressive, and, if harnessed in the right way, could help society solve complex problems and boost our shared prosperity. However, the structure of the market — the actors that have control over the development and deployment of AI — will determine whether AI lives up to its promise or entrenches the power a few dominant corporations already hold over our lives.

At first glance, the recent explosion of new AI products and services could make you think the field has robust competition and that there is a fertile marketplace for new businesses to establish a foothold and grow. But this is largely an illusion.

While competition ostensibly exists in this booming industry, it is rapidly being foreclosed by the largest incumbent technology giants: Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Nvidia, and Meta.

These dominant corporations, which already maintain an iron grip over essential aspects of our digital lives — including smartphones, internet search, online shopping, and social networking — are using their raw financial power and control over critical systems to monopolize the AI industry, exclude or co-opt competitors, and deepen the “walled gardens” that keep consumers locked into their services.

As we detail in a recent report published by the Open Markets Institute and the Mozilla Foundation, these corporate behemoths are already the primary owners and suppliers of key AI inputs and infrastructure, including cloud computing, frontier AI models, chips, and data.

To ensure they maintain and extend their dominance into the AI era, these companies are engaging in a variety of unfair business practices. Consider cloud computing, which provides the raw computational power and server capacity needed to train and host advanced AI models. Microsoft, Amazon, and, to a lesser extent, Google currently control a combined two-thirds of the global cloud computing market.