TLDR: The increasing adoption of agentic artificial intelligence is raising significant antitrust concerns among regulators, with a new paper highlighting risks of market concentration and potential for algorithmic collusion.
The rapid advancement and enterprise adoption of agentic artificial intelligence (AI) are prompting serious scrutiny from antitrust regulators, according to a paper published in the June CPI TechREG Chronicle. The paper, titled ‘Agentic AI: Future Issues at the Intersection of Technology, Innovation and Competition Policy,’ warns that these autonomous AI systems, which complete tasks with minimal or no human supervision, could introduce novel anti-competitive challenges.
One primary concern highlighted by the paper’s authors, including Suarez, is the potential for market concentration. Drawing parallels to the U.S. Department of Justice’s case against Google Search, Suarez suggested that a leading developer of agentic AI could leverage network effects to dominate the sector. Suarez stated, ‘Generative and agentic AI are going to be the search of the future. They’re going to supplant traditional web searching.’ He further cautioned against scenarios where a dominant AI agent provider might ‘create certain tying arrangements or create certain contractual obligations that allow them to gain market concentration.’
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Another significant risk identified is the potential for algorithmic collusion. Suarez elaborated on a scenario where ‘this agentic AI is gathering a bunch of pricing information going around the internet, trying to be the agent for this person but doing so in a way that perhaps leads to problems in terms of price-setting or things of that nature.’ He likened this to past cases where landlords or companies were found to be colluding, raising antitrust concerns. The paper explicitly warns that agentic AI systems could facilitate the formation of market monopolies or become conduits for anticompetitive agreements, prompting legal experts to issue warnings about these emerging antitrust risks.
