by Simon Fondrie-Teitler and Amritha Jayanti
Federal Trade Commission
This blog is part of a series authored by the FTC’s Office of Technology focused on emerging technologies and consumer and market risks, with a look across the layers of technology—from data and infrastructure to applications and design of digital systems.
Over the last several years, artificial intelligence (AI)—a term which can refer to a broad variety of technologies, as a previous FTC blog notes—has attracted an enormous amount of market and media attention. That’s in part because the potential of AI is exciting: there are opportunities for public progress by enhancing human capacity to integrate, analyze, and leverage information. But it’s also, perhaps in larger part, because the introduction of AI presents new layers of uncertainty and risk. The technology is altering the market landscape, with companies moving to provide and leverage essential inputs of AI systems, such as data and hardware – opening a window of opportunity for companies to potentially seize outsized power in this technology domain. AI is also fundamentally shifting the way we operate; it’s lurking behind the scenes (or, in some cases, operating right in our faces) and changing the mechanics by which we go about our daily lives. That can be unsettling, especially when the harms brought about by that change are tangible and felt by everyday consumers.