Antitrust and Consumer Protection
Competition: Fall 2020, Vol 30, No. 2
Content
- Big Data and Antitrust Risks In Close-up: From the Perspective of Real Cases
- Blockchain Technology: a Future Antitrust Target?
- Chair's Column
- Digital Platform Competition, Merger Control, and the Incentive To Innovate: Don't Kill the Goose That Lays the Golden Egg
- Editor's Note
- Fourth Annual "Celebrating Women In Competition Law In California"
- It's High Tide Again In Internet Markets
- Masthead
- Privacy, Pricing, and the Value of Consumer Data: the Complex Nature of the Ccpa's Non-discrimination Requirement
- The Ftaia's "Domestic Effects" Exception: Why the Ninth Circuit Got It Right
- The Simple Economics of Hybrid Marketplaces
- Ai and Interdependent Pricing: Combination Without Conspiracy?
AI AND INTERDEPENDENT PRICING: COMBINATION WITHOUT CONSPIRACY?
By Joshua P. Davis and Anupama K. Reddy1
I. INTRODUCTION
Artificial Intelligence (AI) holds the potential to change our landscape in many ways. Some of them are positive. AI may empower automobiles to drive themselves, greatly reducing traffic accidents2 and freeing up our time to pursue other tasks. It may be able to detect cancer—or its absence—far better than radiologists can, saving lives and avoiding unnecessary surgeries.3 It can help us to identify remedies for viruses and perhaps greatly accelerate our development of vaccines. The list goes on and on.
But AI also has the potential to cause great harm. One place that harm may take place is in the marketplace. AI is a great player of games. It has defeated the world chess champion.4 It has done the same to the world champion of Go,5 a game with even more permutations. Market participants may be able to harness AI’s game-playing power to cause market distortions to their benefit. That possibility and how to deal with it are the topics of this article.