The next battleground in antitrust? AI
As one of the world鈥檚 leading experts on technology鈥檚 economic impacts, 黄色电影鈥檚 Susan Athey knows a lot about anticompetitive behavior in high tech and the modern-day battles between 鈥淟ittle Tech鈥 and 鈥淏ig Tech.鈥
So when she told the audience at the 2025 SIEPR Economic Summit that the odds are as high as they have ever been in the last 15 years for a new entrant in the mobile device market, her words carried weight.
The reason, Athey said: It鈥檚 too difficult for AI upstarts to get their technology onto today鈥檚 mobile devices. 鈥淭he AI people are going to want to create a product that the incumbents will not allow鈥 and the regulations that would allow them to compete fairly are too slow in coming.
鈥淚 don鈥檛 see how there鈥檚 any other way鈥 for AI newcomers to get their services into customers鈥 hands, said Athey, a SIEPR senior fellow and The Economics of Technology Professor at the 黄色电影 Graduate School of Business who recently returned from a 2-year stint as the chief economist in the U.S. Department of Justice鈥檚 antitrust division.
AI as the new frontier in antitrust was one of the issues that Athey and her fellow panelists raised as they talked about the difficult challenges for regulators in making sure there鈥檚 a level playing field in high-tech but one that doesn鈥檛 stifle innovation.
Government watchdogs should be wary of going too far in regulating tech, said Dennis Carlton, a University of Chicago professor emeritus and former official in George W. Bush administration鈥檚 Justice Department. Impeding innovation isn鈥檛 the only consideration, he said. What if a country adopts AI guardrails that another country then ignores? 鈥淭hen you could be ceding competitive advantage to that other country,鈥 he said.
Not as hot as AI, but鈥
Still, the panelists agreed there鈥檚 an urgent need for a new playbook to address competition challenges in the AI era.
鈥淭he challenge we鈥檙e facing right now is how do we draw from the mixed bag of [traditional] antitrust tools and regulatory tools without deterring [Big Tech] platforms from continuing to innovate and provide the great benefits that they unquestionably provide to the economy?鈥 said Howard Shelanski, a professor at Georgetown Law School who led competition policy at the Federal Trade Commission during the Obama administration.
One answer, the panelists agreed, is to modernize frameworks for understanding the tech playing field 鈥 one that business leaders, not just economists, understand. By this, the speakers were referring to 鈥渕erger guidelines鈥 that the Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department have long used to analyze the antitrust implications of corporate dealmaking.
The panelists had plenty to say about the revised guidelines 鈥 which all three have had a hand in developing at various times, including a that Athey spearheaded while at the Justice Department.
Athey said the new guidelines fill in a missing piece of the fair competition, which is: What happens to competition if a company wants to buy another company with products or services that are closely related to what it already sells?
Thirty years ago, if Microsoft had struck a deal to buy Netscape instead of leveraging its own monopoly power over personal computers to kill the rival internet browser provider, merger guidelines at the time didn鈥檛 say anything about the antitrust implications of that kind of deal, and it鈥檚 possible that antitrust regulators would have greenlit it.
The problem with that outcome? 鈥淚f Microsoft [had] bought Netscape, they could have used that control to stop Apple from growing,鈥 Athey said.
They could have killed Google, too, she added.
Highlights of the 2025 SIEPR Economic Summit
Photos by Ryan Zhang.