Feds set stage for antitrust probes of Nvidia, Microsoft and OpenAI

[BumRushDaShow]

Source: Politico

06/06/2024 01:16 AM EDT
Updated: 06/06/2024 10:28 AM EDT


The Justice Department and Federal Trade Commission are nearing an agreement to divvy up investigations of potential anticompetitive conduct by some of the world’s largest technology companies in the artificial intelligence industry, according to three people with knowledge of the negotiations.

As part of the arrangement, the DOJ is poised to investigate Nvidia and its leading position in supplying the high-end semiconductors underpinning AI computing, while the FTC is set to probe whether Microsoft, and its partner OpenAI, have unfair advantages with the rapidly evolving technology, particularly around the technology used for large language models.

The three companies have been leaders in AI, with the technology powering Nvidia today to a $3 trillion market value, second only to Microsoft.

The deal has been negotiated for nearly a year. And while leaders of both agencies have expressed urgency in ensuring that the rapidly growing artificial intelligence technology is not dominated by existing tech giants, until an agreement is finalized, there was very little investigative work they could do. The agreement is not yet final, but could be completed as soon as this week.

Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2024/06/06/federal-antitrust-probes-nvidia-microsoft-openai-00161973

[Mosby]

1. Why is it only sucessful tech companies that get investigated for antitrust laws?

Why don't they investigate and break up frito lay for being a monopoly. They control the entire chip isles in stores. Then maybe Nabisco.

Remember when the FTC fined MS a billion dollars for giving away a browser? They sure were on the money with that one, Google should sent them a check.

[BumRushDaShow]

2. "Why don't they investigate and break up frito lay for being a monopoly."

Because Frito-Lay is owned by PepsiCo (so they are not "independent" ), and there are a billion smaller companies out there selling snack foods of all kinds (you can see that by just walking down a big supermarket aisle that has shelves of nothing but chips, various "puffs", popcorn, and pretzels).

[Mosby]

3. Maybe look closer

Frito Lay fills at least half of the chip isle. Some of those tortilla chips and pretzels are also frito lay (tostitos, rold gold, santitas, smartfood). They control shelf space thru slotting fees and "custom" pricing. The only place you see small companies snack products is at places like Sprouts and Whole Foods. There you will find brands like Boulder and Have'A Corn Chip, I bet most people reading this have never heard of both those brands, that's because of Frito Lay and slotting fees.

[cstanleytech]

5. If you want a far worse one try EssilorLuxottica.

[Mosby]

6. Absolutely

I was able to avoid them for my last pair of glasses (prodesign denmark) but they sell under so many different labels its almost impossible. I think they are an Italian company.

[cstanleytech]

8. Ya and what's worse is they make one of the best progressive lenses which I unfortunately need now *sigh*

[Mosby]

9. I don't wear any type of bifocals

When I remove my glasses I read fine, no astigmatism, both eyes are almost the same.

My elasticity is shot though.

[cstanleytech]

10. I'm pretty much screwed entirely now so I chose progressives to try and retain as much natural vision as possible.

[Mosby]

12. Thought about surgery?

They can do wild stuff now, like turning your cornea into a progressive lens.

[cstanleytech]

17. My ophthalmologist has said that I would be at high risk for complications and does not recommend it/

[BumRushDaShow]

7. No. It depends on where you live and how big the store is

Here in PA, we have a couple HUGE brands - "Herr's", "Snyder's of Hanover", and "Utz", where Frito-Lay stuff only has a small part of the 100ft of shelves. Like Hershey's which is headquartered here in PA, the state pushes its "home town" brands.







Each of these brands have at least a dozen "flavors" and varieties of snack product.

[FakeNoose]

11. Most of the successful companies got that way by squeezing competitors out

... and by maintaining their advantage with patents and tech advances. These cases are about technology, not food production. The old survival of the fittest culture might have applied before Microsoft and NVidia existed.

But these guys rely on Big Bad Brother Uncle Sam to punch down their competition from China and other foreign countries.

[Angleae]

13. Because it's perfectly legal to own 50+% of the market.

What is not legal is to leverage that against your customer base. If all Frito-Lay does is make chips, take orders, and ship them, then there's no laws broken. If they go, "in order for us to do business with you, you must do these things for us." then antitrust laws can be applied.

[cstanleytech]

4. Doesnt make sense to me since their three of them which means their is competition.

Unless of course they begin working together in which case would be a problem.

[Igel]

15. Depends how they define the "market."

Lately they've been getting creative with their definition of the relevant market. Very often normal people look at their definition up close and just shake their heads, saying they don't see it. But if you define your market just right, you could make Li' Debbies into a near monopoly, I'd rather think.

[4lbs]

19. They do work together.

nVidia GPUs run on MicroSoft's OS and OpenAI (which is heavily invested in by MicroSoft).

MicroSoft is a gigantic investor in OpenAI and ChatGPT. They run "best" on nVidia GPUs.


Ever hear of ChatGPT? Yup. It involves all 3.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenAI


In April 2016, OpenAI released a public beta of "OpenAI Gym", its platform for reinforcement learning research. Nvidia gifted its first DGX-1 supercomputer to OpenAI in August 2016 to help it train larger and more complex AI models with the capability of reducing processing time from six days to two hours

On January 23, 2023, Microsoft announced a new US$10 billion investment in OpenAI Global, LLC over multiple years, partially needed to use Microsoft's cloud-computing service Azure. Rumors of this deal suggested that Microsoft may receive 75% of OpenAI's profits until it secures its investment return and a 49% stake in the company. The investment is believed to be a part of Microsoft's efforts to integrate OpenAI's ChatGPT into the Bing search engine.

On February 7, 2023, Microsoft announced that it was building AI technology based on the same foundation as ChatGPT into Microsoft Bing, Edge, Microsoft 365 and other products.

[cstanleytech]

20. Interesting.

[highplainsdem]

14. Good.

[Passages]

16. There is a great deal for Biden administration to brag about.

Good things all around in this policy circle.

[Marthe48]

18. One thing to keep in mind

When people complain about the lavk of swiftness of the DoJ regarding traitor getting charged. DoJ is overseeing myriad investigations into or charges against different criminals or illegal activity. I do get impatient because it is taking so long, but then I see a story like this and realize that they don't have just one case to work on. Add to that the idea that there are people employed by DoJ who are willing to hamper progress because of their personal viewpoints.
My solution for the food monopolies is to avoid buying name-brand processed food. It doesn't break the monopoly, but it saves me money.