As we gear up for the incoming administration, the 119th Congress, and state legislative sessions across the country, these are the five issues Omidyar Network wants governments to prioritize.
Curbing the outsized power and influence of Big Tech
With last year’s winning legal and regulatory efforts, including a landmark monopoly judgment against Google, a successful lawsuit by Epic Games against Google, numerous enforcement actions by the Federal Trade Commission, and significant lawsuits wending their way through the courts, Omidyar Network will continue to advocate for pro-competition and anti-monopoly enforcement so that start-ups and entrepreneurs have a real chance to bring innovative ideas to market and consumers have trustworthy choices.
Our hope is that tech leaders work with government and civil society—including philanthropy—to promote transparency, openness, and leadership that will serve all of society.
Broadening access to essential AI resources and establishing public options
If more academics, researchers, nonprofits, and startups have access to essential AI resources and data, doors will open to a diverse range of talent and ideas that will further responsible innovation. This access will also provide a counterbalance to Big Tech’s dominance.
We can’t expect that private companies—driven by shareholders’ demands for profits—will build in the public interest. That’s why we need “public compute” as an alternative to corporate AI infrastructure across all layers of the AI stack[1]. This could help bridge the “compute divide” between the largest tech companies, start-ups, and academic institutions to ensure access to resources in ways that best serve people and communities.
Investing in research, development, and infrastructure
To remain on the cutting edge, the federal government needs to continue to invest in the basic and applied research that will drive the development of future technologies, products, and services.
As noted in our point of view “Our Vision for a Responsible Tech Future,” we believe government must not only serve as a regulator and enforcer, but also set design standards and priorities for the kind of technology we want to create and support in service of the public good. Additionally, we need to reconsider how to manage the returns from government’s significant early-stage investments in tech—where the losses are socialized and the gains accrue solely to the individual founders and their investors—or how government procurement can be a lever for better tech.
Safeguarding everyone’s digital experiences
While the Senate overwhelmingly passed the Kids Online Safety Act last year, with the House’s inaction, it failed to become law. Congress needs to pass this significant child online safety bill, as it will not only protect children, but also set the stage for meaningful action on new technologies, such as AI companions that also pose a threat to online safety for many vulnerable people.
While generative AI can create realistic images, text, audio, and video that have tremendous potential for good, it also poses new risks to trust, safety, transparency, and credibility. Government needs to put safeguards in place that protect consumers against deception and fraud, authenticate content, detect and label synthetic content, and prevent AI from producing abusive materials.
Artists and creatives also need to be able to safeguard their work from being used to train AI without compensation or credit. Government needs to update copyright and intellectual property laws for this new digital era.
Making tech work for workers
We believe that corporations need to engage workers in how technology is used in the workplace so that it augments jobs and raises wages (alongside increased productivity), rather than replaces people. Workers need to have a meaningful seat at the table to have a say in whether and how digital technology is deployed in the workplace.
We also believe that workers should benefit from the productivity gains technology brings. This can happen through high-road employer practices, collective and sectoral bargaining, employee ownership, and federal and state policies that provide guardrails about how AI should be deployed in the workplace.
Joining together
With the right incentives and guardrails in place, we can address these challenging issues so that the digital revolution serves all of society and spurs world-class innovation. It will also require policymakers listening to many different voices on tech issues, not just industry.
We know that achieving our goals requires a collective effort. Philanthropy, civil society, industry leaders, technologists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers from both sides of the aisle need to come together to find long-term, sustainable solutions that will bend the arc of the digital revolution toward shared power, prosperity, and possibilities.
We hope you will join us.
[1] The AI stack includes an infrastructure layer (operating system and connections), a model layer (a selection of intelligence models spanning generative AI to smaller specific models proprietary to an individual company), and the application layer on top.
