US antitrust enforcer says ‘urgent’ scrutiny needed over Big Tech’s control of AI
美国反垄断执法者表示，对大型科技公司对人工智能的控制需要进行“紧急”审查

The top US antitrust enforcer will look “with urgency” at the artificial intelligence sector, following concerns that power over the transformative technology is being concentrated among a few deep-pocketed players.
美国最高反垄断执法者将“紧急关注”人工智能领域，因担心对这一变革性技术的控制权正集中在少数资金雄厚的参与者手中。

Jonathan Kanter said in an interview with the Financial Times that he was examining “monopoly choke points and the competitive landscape” in AI, encompassing everything from computing power and the data used to train large language models, to cloud service providers, engineering talent and access to essential hardware such as graphics processing unit chips.
Jonathan Kanter 在接受《金融时报》采访时表示，他正在研究人工智能领域的“垄断瓶颈和竞争格局”，涵盖了从计算能力和用于训练大型语言模型的数据，到云服务提供商、工程人才以及获得关键硬件（如图形处理单元芯片）的渠道。

Regulators are concerned that the nascent AI sector is “at the high-water mark of competition, not the floor” and must act “with urgency” to ensure that already dominant tech companies do not control the market, Kanter said.
监管机构担心新兴的人工智能行业处于“竞争的高潮，而非低谷”，必须“紧急行动”，以确保已经占主导地位的科技公司不会控制市场，坎特表示。

“Sometimes the most meaningful intervention is when the intervention is in real time,” he added. “The beauty of that is you can be less invasive.”
“有时候，最有意义的干预是在实时干预时，”他补充道。“这样做的美妙之处在于你可以减少侵入性。”

Kanter, now in his third year at the Department of Justice, has alongside the Federal Trade Commission spearheaded a tougher antitrust approach, suing tech giants such as Google and Apple for what the US government alleges are unfair monopolies in services including app stores, search engines and digital advertising. He has worked closely with the FTC’s chair Lina Khan.
坎特现在已经在司法部任职三年，他与联邦贸易委员会一道，推动了更严格的反垄断立场，起诉谷歌和苹果等科技巨头，美国政府声称它们在应用商店、搜索引擎和数字广告等服务中存在不公平的垄断。他与 FTC 主席莉娜·汗密切合作。

He said the regulators were looking at the generative AI sector and examining the competitive landscape in microchips.
他说监管机构正在关注生成式人工智能领域，并正在审查微芯片的竞争格局。

Kanter said the GPUs needed to train LLMs had become a “scarce resource”. Nvidia dominates sales of the most advanced GPUs, and its market capitalisation surged past Apple’s on Wednesday to become the world’s second-most valuable listed company.
坎特表示，用于训练LLMs的 GPU 已成为“稀缺资源”。英伟达主导销售最先进的 GPU，并且其市值在周三超过苹果，成为全球第二大市值最高的上市公司。

Kanter pointed to government initiatives to boost domestic production, including the $39bn of incentives in the Chips Act, but added that antitrust regulators were looking at how chipmakers decide to allocate their most advanced products amid rampant demand.
坎特指出政府为促进国内生产而采取的举措，包括芯片法案中的 390 亿美元激励措施，但补充说，反垄断监管机构正在审查芯片制造商在需求激增的情况下如何决定分配其最先进产品。

“One of the things to think through is conflict of interest, a thumb on the scale, because they fear enabling a competitor or are helping to prop up a customer,” Kanter said. “If decisions are being made that show companies are not caring about maximising profitability or generating shareholder value, but more looking at the competitive consequences” then that would be an issue.
坎特说：“需要考虑的一件事是利益冲突，在天平上加重了一边的分量，因为他们担心帮助竞争对手或支持客户。”“如果决策显示公司并不关心最大化利润或创造股东价值，而更多地关注竞争后果”，那就会成为一个问题。

Since the sensation surrounding the release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot in November 2022, an arms race has broken out as companies rush to secure multibillion-dollar partnerships with some of the most promising AI companies and those building models and apps based on the technology.
自 2022 年 11 月 OpenAI 的 ChatGPT 聊天机器人发布以来，一场竞赛已经爆发，各公司争相与一些最有前途的人工智能公司以及基于该技术构建模型和应用程序的公司达成数十亿美元的合作伙伴关系。

Emblematic of such deals is Microsoft’s $13bn investment in OpenAI, which came with exclusive rights to the start-up’s intellectual property and a share of its profits but stopped short of an outright acquisition.
这类交易的典范是微软对 OpenAI 的 130 亿美元投资，该投资获得了该初创公司的知识产权独家权利和利润份额，但并未完全收购。

Nevertheless, the FTC as well as UK and EU competition watchdogs have said they will probe the relationship alongside Google and Amazon’s multibillion deals with rival Anthropic.
尽管如此，美国联邦贸易委员会以及英国和欧盟的竞争监管机构表示，他们将与谷歌和亚马逊与竞争对手 Anthropic 的数十亿美元交易一起调查这种关系。

In March, Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella hired Mustafa Suleyman, founder of another AI start-up called Inflection, and most of its 70-person staff to create a new consumer AI unit. Some industry observers saw the deal as a tactic to circumvent antitrust laws and escape a formal probe.
在三月份，微软首席执行官萨蒂亚·纳德拉聘请了另一家名为 Inflection 的人工智能初创公司的创始人穆斯塔法·苏莱曼，以及其大部分 70 人团队，创建一个新的消费者人工智能部门。一些行业观察人士将这笔交易视为规避反垄断法律并逃避正式调查的策略。

“Acqui-hires are something that antitrust enforcers” will look at, Kanter said, while declining to comment on any specific transactions. “We’re not using stylistic or formalistic characteristics of how these companies [explain these deals]. What we look at are the market realities.

“We are focused on the facts. If the form is different but the substance is the same, then we will not hesitate to act,” he added. “We look at what are the raw materials to produce a product. Whether that’s steel or engineers, that fits within the traditional paradigm of what we care about.”
“我们专注于事实。如果形式不同但实质相同，那么我们将毫不犹豫地采取行动，”他补充道。“我们看的是生产产品的原材料。无论是钢铁还是工程师，只要符合我们关心的传统范式。”

Microsoft has pushed back against accusations that it exerts unfair influence or de facto control through its investments and cloud computing services. It has also invested in France’s Mistral and ​​put $1.5bn into Abu Dhabi AI group G42.
微软反驳了有关其通过投资和云计算服务施加不公平影响或实际控制的指控。它还投资于法国的 Mistral，并向阿布扎比人工智能集团 G42 投入了 15 亿美元。

“The partnerships that we’re pursuing have demonstrably added competition to the marketplace,” the tech giant’s president Brad Smith told the FT. “I might argue that Microsoft’s partnership with OpenAI has created this new AI market” and without its help, the start-up “would not have been able to train or deploy its models”.
“我们正在追求的合作伙伴关系显然已经给市场增加了竞争力，”科技巨头微软的总裁布拉德·史密斯告诉英国《金融时报》。“我认为微软与 OpenAI 的合作创造了这个新的人工智能市场”，而且没有它的帮助，这家初创公司“将无法训练或部署其模型”。

Asked why Microsoft did not buy Inflection, he said: “We didn’t want to own the company. We wanted to hire some of the people who worked at the company.”
当被问及为什么微软没有收购 Inflection 时，他说：“我们不想拥有这家公司。我们想雇佣一些在这家公司工作过的人。”