Early Innings: Generative AI Policy & Tech Platforms
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Emerging US and EU policy for generative AI looks to protect consumers, national security, and copyright industries. For investors, Biden’s key GenAI goal is competition: scrutinizing US tech platforms’ control of key inputs (especially compute) — and perhaps embracing competition from open-source models. Therefore, the U.S. presidential election could impact tech platforms long term goals to fully commercialize generative AI.
Given generative AIs transformative and disruptive potential, regulation is a near given. At this early stage, we’re anticipating an overall manageable policy trajectory for leading tech companies to continue commercializing generative AI. However, competition policy in 2024 could influence long-term generative AI market structure.
We suspect Congress won’t pass a comprehensive generative AI law before late 2025 at the earliest. Therefore, we expect the White House to be the main driver of generative AI policy using existing laws.
Biden’s likely 2024 actions include:
without an AI-specific statute, courts will have a big say in how far regulatory agencies can push existing laws to truly affect generative AI models/services. Keep in mind that courts are trending conservative and anti-regulation.
The November 2024 election could be particularly important. A Biden win likely continues policies aimed at restraining the U.S. tech platforms from dominating generative AI. A Trump win probably lets U.S. platforms more fully leverage their considerable natural advantages (compute, data, financial resources) via M&A/partnerships — with less risk of disruptive antitrust or consumer protection rulings.
Europe appears close to enacting a new AI Act — that’s on top of three recent tech laws (GDPR, DMA, DSA). So, on paper, the E.U. is well-equipped — and it’s certainly possible they do impose aggressive generative AI measures. however, the history of E.U. tech policy (e.g., GDPR) suggests to us that Europe may have only limited effects on affecting U.S. tech platforms’ commercialization