Happy Tuesday! The newsletter will be off until next Tuesday for the holiday, but how much news could possibly break in just a few days? Send news tips and your wildest OpenAI gossip to: cristiano.lima@washpost.com. (Today’s newsletter was written with an assist from our colleague Gerrit De Vynck.)
Below: A panel subpoenas tech CEOs over children’s online safety, and U.S. streaming services back down on daring films under Indian pressure. First:
Microsoft’s Altman ‘acquisition’ stokes fear AI control is consolidating
Sam Altman’s plan to join tech giant Microsoft after his ouster as the influential face of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is reigniting concern that control over artificial-intelligence tools is becoming too concentrated among a small number of Silicon Valley titans.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella tweeted early Monday that both Altman and Greg Brockman, the former OpenAI president who resigned in solidarity with Altman on Friday, will be joining the company to lead “a new advanced AI research team.”
Nearly all of OpenAI’s employees, meanwhile, threatened to quit unless Altman is reinstated, raising the specter that much of its workforce could soon decamp for one of the tech giants.
The looming transfer of talent is stoking fears among consumer advocates that the AI sector will soon become more dominated by behemoths like Microsoft and Google.
Steven Weber, a graduate professor at the University of California at Berkeley, called Microsoft’s plundering of talent from OpenAI the “ultimate AI antitrust heist” and “a de facto acquisition of a company in which it previously had a minority stake.”
Maria Langholz, communications director for the consumer group Demand Progress, said in an email that the shake-up “underscores the critical need for the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice to investigate the rapid consolidation happening within the AI space.”
The move could allow Microsoft “to acquire OpenAI's intellectual property with ZERO federal oversight or the need for regulatory approval,” warned George Rakis, executive director of the advocacy group NextGen Competition, in a statement.
It’s not immediately clear how much the tumultuous overhaul may affect Microsoft’s ties to OpenAI — or how significantly its approach to AI may shift with Altman on board.
In his tweet, Nadella appeared to play down the disruption, saying Microsoft remains “committed to our partnership with OpenAI and [we] have confidence in our product road map.”
OpenAI already shares its most important technology with Microsoft as part of the two companies’ partnership. In return, Microsoft gives OpenAI access to its huge computer data centers, which are vital to training advanced AI and very expensive to run.
OpenAI would need to either continue its partnership with Microsoft or find another investor and data center partner if it wanted to continue to train its own AI going forward.
(Altman's move to Microsoft is seemingly not yet a done deal, with Nadella leaving open the door for an OpenAI reunion in TV interviews Monday.)
Regardless, the moves may hasten calls for regulators to dial up scrutiny of Microsoft and other giants, which in recent years have invested in a flurry of AI start-ups.
More than 20 consumer groups last week urged the Federal Trade Commission and the Justice Department to investigate whether some recent AI acquisitions by Big Tech violate antitrust laws. The letter suggested that Microsoft, Google, Amazon and other giants may be investing in rather than acquiring some start-ups as a “strategic choice” to avoid regulatory blowback.
(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post. The Post’s interim CEO, Patty Stonesifer, sits on Amazon’s board.)
It’s an issue that’s already on the radar of federal regulators.
FTC officials are concerned that major tech companies may be carefully structuring their investments, including in AI, in an attempt to avoid regulatory scrutiny, according to a person familiar with the agency’s thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter.
Daniel Castro, vice president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation think tank, argued that the changes at OpenAI highlight how “dynamic” the AI sector is. He said the concern over their impact on concentration is “predictable but laughable.”
“Talent is a valuable input, and talent is not tied to any one company,” Castro said in an email. “Hundreds of OpenAI employees have signaled a willingness to leave, so despite claims by some critics, even the leading AI companies do not have a stranglehold on top tech talent.”
The rapid advancements in AI development also serve as “a reminder that any dominance is short-lived” and that the “firms leading in AI today will not necessarily be the same ones leading tomorrow,” he added.
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Senators subpoena tech CEOs to testify on children’s online safety
The Senate Judiciary Committee announced Monday that it had subpoenaed X’s Linda Yaccarino, Discord’s Jason Citron and Snap’s Evan Spiegel to testify at a Dec. 6 hearing on children’s online safety after “repeated refusals” from the tech companies to comply with the panel’s investigation into the matter, your host reports.
The move seeking to force the executives to testify “marks a major escalation by lawmakers probing how social media platforms may harm children’s mental health, an area of broad bipartisan interest on Capitol Hill,” your host writes. The committee also expects Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to separately testify voluntarily next year, Judiciary Committee spokesperson Emily Hampsten said in an email. Meta and TikTok declined to comment.
The hearing planned for next month would allow senators “to press CEOs from some of the world’s largest social media companies on their failures to protect children online,” the committee said in a news release.
X and Snap representatives said they are communicating and coordinating availability with the panel. Discord global public policy head Ross LaJeunesse said the company has “been actively engaging with the Committee on how we can best contribute to this important industry discussion.”
Epic Games CEO calls Android a “fake open platform” in testimony
Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney testified that Google’s Android operating system is a “fake open platform” during a high-profile antitrust trial that could decide whether the tech giant illegally dominates the app marketplace, Bloomberg News’s Malathi Nayak reports.
“Sweeney, who founded the company that makes the blockbuster Fortnite, took the witness stand Monday in San Francisco federal court to reinforce his claims that Google Play policies are unlawful and allow Alphabet Inc. to maintain a monopoly in the Android mobile-app distribution market,” Nayak writes.
A San Francisco jury this month began hearing testimony from Epic, which earlier this year was unsuccessful in getting a court to agree with a similar argument that Apple held an illegal monopoly in its App Store. “The court fight started in 2020 when Epic marketed Fortnite on Android and sidestepped the Google Play billing system and the 30% revenue cut it was taking from app developers,” the Bloomberg report adds.
Google has contested the accusations on grounds that it competes with Apple in the app space and that taking revenue cuts from app purchases transacted through Google Play is a legitimate business practice.
Netflix, Amazon back down on daring films under Indian pressure
In the last four years, as U.S. streaming giants like Netflix and Amazon’s Prime Video have worked to shake up India’s influential entertainment market, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has threatened criminal cases and coordinated mass public pressure to shape what Indian content gets produced by the companies, our colleagues Gerry Shih and Anant Gupta report.
“Today, a culture of self-censorship pervades the streaming industry here, manifesting in ways both dramatic and subtle,” the report says. “Executives at the India offices of Netflix and Prime Video and their lawyers ask for extensive changes to rework political plots and remove passing references to religion that might offend the Hindu right wing or the BJP, industry insiders say.”
“Why greenlight it, then change your mind?” asked filmmaker Anurag Kashyap, whose adaptation of a nonfiction book exploring Hindu bigotry was shelved by Netflix. “It’s invisible censorship,” he added.
Rant and rave
X users react to Sam Altman’s unexpected OpenAI departure. Bearly. AI founder Trung Phan:
New York Times tech reporter Mike Isaac:
the funnest part about this saga is that every story one writes is immediately old/irrelevant 20 minutes afte rpublishing
— rat king 🐀 (@MikeIsaac) November 20, 2023
Laskie founder Chris Bakke:
Agency scanner
Inside the industry
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Workforce report
- Broadband Breakfast holds a webinar Wednesday at noon to discuss the upcoming first anniversary of ChatGPT’s public release
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