DOJ’s Kanter Sets His Eyes On AI

Jonathan Kanter, head of antitrust at the U.S. Justice Department, spoke to an audience at the renowned South by Southwest festival in Austin, regarding his agency’s close monitoring of the growing artificial intelligence industry, reported Axios. He indicated that they are taking a keen interest in this technology so as to ensure fair practices and saturation competition across all areas of its implementation.

“We use the term [artificial intelligence] as if it’s a very narrow category, but these are just tools,” Kanter said during a taping for the New York Times’ “Hard Fork” podcast.

Related: Revising the U.S. DOJ-FTC Horizontal Merger Guidelines – Accounting for Algorithmic Coordination

“When we think about AI, we think about it as a tool… it’s really important that we understood that, so we’ve hired data scientists and are bringing in expertise to make sure we have the ability to understand that technology,” Kanter said during the interview with technology journalists Kevin Roose and Casey Newton.Kanter said their AI initiative known as “Project Gretzky”, named after the famous hockey player Wayne Gretzky. This is inspired by his iconic quote about anticipating where the puck will go. 

Last week the US Chamber of Commerce called for regulations to protect against the potential risks of artificial intelligence technologies, a departure from its usual anti-regulatory stance. Policymakers and business leaders must act swiftly in order to create a risk-based regulatory framework that will ensure AI tools are implemented responsibly.

This has been brought to public attention by programs such as ChatGPT, which is able to provide quick answers to queries with wide-ranging impacts on national security, education, and economic growth.