Taking on big tech.
The issue is becoming so popular it’s bringing together political adversaries like Donald Trump and Nancy Pelosi. Even Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz. Last week, the House Judiciary Committee announced it would be launching a bipartisan antitrust investigation into companies like Google, Facebook and Amazon.
Each of those tech giants has become enormously powerful, particularly as it relates to gathering personal data and influencing behavior. Increasingly, that control is being driven by AI & machine learning technologies—e.g., Google’s Assistant and YouTube algorithms; Facebook’s content flagging, filtering and moderation; and Amazon’s Alexa, purchasing recommendations and AWS tools.
It’s clear that AI is no longer a nascent prototype tech of the future. It’s being industrialized and commercialized at a massive scale, impacting billions of people at the behest of the world’s biggest companies.
“Essentially as AI/ML technology becomes more readily available, these huge firms are positioned to dominate and potentially be extremely hard to compete with—especially within certain core competencies,”. “It’s a look at what’s to come and how central AI/ML is going to be for essentially all internet users and enterprises alike.”
The tech giants have all made it clear that implementing AI/ML throughout their business and product offerings and by running open source frameworks—like TensorFlow and PyTorch—thathelp build an ecosystem of development around their platforms, creating a moat of sorts and attracting AI/ML talent.
Venture capital investors, however, are still making plenty of bets on smaller players trying to compete in the space, perhaps by carving out tangential or niche areas where the giants aren’t as firmly developed. According to PitchBook data, deal flow into US-based AI/ML startups has increased unabated for about a decade.