Risk of Trump and Big Tech deregulation
With reports that Brendan Carr has been appointed by Donald Trump to head up the Federal Communications Commission in the US, there are concerns that this signals greater deregulation. Speaking during the House of Lords Large Language Models and Generative AI debate earlier this month, Labour peer, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port described Carr as “a man with a long record of deregulation”.
Griffith believes that this will have a big impact on the regulations around the world. “We may be overregulated,” he said, “but soon we are going to be quite heavily under regulated.”
His fear is that this will lead to “a cauldron of competing and keeping up with each other or outrunning each other” which, warns Griffith, will put everyone in a dangerous place.
Given the Trump administration is taking office in January, it is particuarly interesting to see that over the last few weeks there have been a number of legal moves both here in the UK and the US that have put the excesses of Big Tech under the spotlight.
Google under investigation
Manchester Law Firm, Barings, is set to take on the might of Microsoft and Google, over copyright infringement for training their various AI engines.
Meanwhile, Nikki Stopford’s collective complaint against Google, took a major step forward after the Competition Appeal Tribunal (CAT) certified that Google will need to defend itself against allegations of upselling digital advertising. The co-founder of Consumer Voice, and legal firm Hausfeld & Co LLP, said: “We think that because the cost of advertising is higher for businesses and because most businesses are using Google ads to advertise their products, then the impact of those higher costs is impacting all consumers.”
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is also looking at whether there is enough competition in the mobile browser market, dominated by Apple’s Safari on iOS and Google Chrome on Android.
The fact that Google paid Apple and Samsung – the two leading mobile phone makers – to make Google Search the default search engine on their devices, is something regulators see as anticompetitive. The US Department of Justice won a landmark victory against Alphabet, the parent company of Google in August, and is reportedly asking for Google to offload its Chrome browser as remediation.
But what happens when Trump takes over? Will there be a clampdown on Big Tech or will the digital giants have an easy ride?
There will be global ramifications if the incoming US administration is indeed hell bent on deregulation. Big Tech impacts everyone. Now is the time to ensure we dictate their influence rather than give them freedom to do as they please.