Interoperability: AI’s technological diversification to counter market concentration

1. Interoperability
AI’s technological
diversification to counter
market concentration
Professor Chris Marsden @SussCIGR
13th October 2021 EP Interactio

2. • I research the application of Artificial Intelligence to
democratic processes:
• election cybersecurity and political disinformation,
• major recent reports for
• European Parliament (2019) and
• Commonwealth (2020)
• [2020] Platform values and democratic elections: How can the law regulate digital
disinformation? Chris Marsden, Trisha Meyer, Ian Brown, Comp. Law & Security Rev.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clsr.2019.105373

3. UK AI Research
• Trusted Autonomous Systems Governance & Regulation Pillar 1, my focus is
• the future of Artificial Intelligence regulation, focussed on those issues above,
• the proposed EU Artificial Intelligence Act and its enforcement,
• where the rhetoric very often is completely at odds with the reality and
• poorly understood by observers outside the European institutions.

4. Are we stumbling into Brave New World?

5. Zuck Off

6. Facebook
Down
• 4 October
• Facebook WhatsApp
Instagram out for 5.5 hours
• BGP screw up
• INSTA: Tween (>12) mental
health instantly improved?
• WhatsApp relied upon by
2.5billion users

7. What do we need?
Interoperability like email
• Fixes Facebook Down
• Interop with Insta & WhatsApp
• Zuck already plans for the empire
• Why not everyone else?
• Google too!
• FaceTime too!
• LinkedIn & Skype too!

8. Read more: Professor Ian Brown
• https://openforumeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Ian_Brown_Interoperability_for_competition_regulation.pdf

9. DMA: digital platforms should be
subject to ex-ante regulation
Small number of “gatekeeper” platforms dominate the digital economy,
• by intermediating access between consumers and businesses;
• ex-post antitrust enforcement not effective w. conduct of GAFAM,
• Time & difficulties of devising genuinely effective remedies; and
• current EU competition law too slow and inflexible.
Existing law no means of preventing markets with a
• large but not yet dominant player
• from irreversibly tipping in favour of that company

10. What activities does the DMA capture?
DMA does not apply to entire digital sector, only Core Platform Services (CPS):
• (i) online intermediation services (e.g., marketplaces, app stores);
• (ii) online search engines (e.g., Google);
• (iii) online social networking services (e.g., Facebook);
• (iv) video sharing platform services (e.g., YouTube);
• (v) number independent interpersonal electronic communication services
• e.g. messaging WhatsApp, Facetime, videoconferencing apps, email services;
• (vi) operating systems; (vii) cloud services; and
• (viii) advertising services provided by a provider of any CPS listed above. GAFAM

11. Which companies are subject to the DMA?
VLOPs: Very Large Online Platforms
Only “gatekeepers” that meet three criteria:
• Size: annual EEA turnover of €6.5billion in last 3 years, or Market
capitalisation €65 billion in the last financial year,
• CPS in at least three Member States,
• Gateway control for business users towards final consumers:
• CPS with 45m EU MAUs (10% of EU’s pop) 10,000+ EU business users;
• (expected) entrenched and durable position: presumed if 45m MAUs.

12. Obligations imposed on core platform services
• Must provide advertisers and publishers to which a platform supplies advertising
services with certain information about pricing of those services
• Must allow businesses to promote and contract with users outside the platform,
• where such off-platform purchases take place,
• allow those businesses to provide those products and services through their own software
applications;
• refrain from using non-public data from business users to provide services in
competition with these users;
• allow uninstallation of preinstalled applications unless technically essential;
• allow installation of third-party apps and app stores on its operating systems,
• If do not endanger integrity of hardware or operating systems provided by the gatekeeper;
• refrain from preferencing own services and products in rankings;
• provide business users with access to data generated by their/their customers use

13. Pro-competitive measures
• provide FRAND access to ranking/query/click/view data generated by search engine
• apply FRAND general conditions of access for business users to its app store.
• refrain from technical restrictions on users switching between (or subscribing to)
different apps using the gatekeeper’s operating system;
• provide competitors FRAND access to interoperability of their operating system,
hardware or software;
• provide advertisers/publishers with measuring tools to carry out independent
verification of ad inventories;
• facilitate data portability.