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You just got out of speaking with the folks at Y Combinator. Talk to us a little bit about who you're speaking to and why you're here.
What's the message.
Well, thanks so much for having me, Emily, And an important part of my job is going around the country and hearing from Americans across markets, across sectors to understand what are the pain points that they're seeing in the markets that they're trying to work in, compete in, buy in.
And so I'm so glad to be here in San Francisco meeting with folks across the tech community, including founders, including vcs, including startups, and trying to understand, you know, how do we make sure that our free and fair enterprise system can remain robust and that innovation and competition can thrive, especially at this moment of technological change and a potential inflection point.
Obviously, how AI will play out is very much top of mind here. I just spoke with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, who unveiled the largest open source AI model ever this week, and really double down on what he thinks are the benefits of the open source approach. Take a listen to what he had to say.
The way that we can control our own destiny on this and make sure that we have access to leading AI is by building it and having it become an industry's standard. But it actually gets stronger by being able to share it and have the ecosystem around it.
Where do you stand cher con on Meta's open approach versus closed source competitors like open AI and Google and Zuckerberg's remark specifically, well, look, without.
Weighing in on any specific company. As a general matter, historically we've seen that openness and open source can be a critical vector of innovation, right. I mean, what happens traditionally when you render some of these ecosystems more open is that it can lower barriers to entry, It can lower costs for entrepreneurs and startups and really enable them to innovate much more freely. And so we want to make sure that that tradition continues. We are watching very closely.
I think there's still an open question around what openness really means in the AI context. Our team has been focusing on this idea of open weight models, which we think could similarly engender a lot of competition and innovation and make it easier for startups and entrepreneurs to compete on a level playing field. Of course, we need to really closely understand what are any restrictions licensing restrictions that are being included here and could those be fore closing competition.
More generally, we also need to be aware of how there are significant incumbents that may have an outsized role to be playing because they have key control over the raw material and key inputs, and so we need to be aware of the broader potential competition issue us or bottlenecks or choke points that could emerge in ways that could inhibit innovation and inhibit competition. And so that's what we're going to be talking with founders and vcs and others about today.
Something else you've been looking into more recently is surveillance pricing, which is how AI is being used to rapidly change pricing based on consumer behavior. And there are some really dystopian concerns here about how this could lead to dangerous financial targeting. What are some examples you've seen of this and what are you hoping to find.
So as you know, for years now, Americans have had their personal data and information closely tracked and surveilled by a whole set of companies in ways that can really
threaten people's privacy. What we see now is that firms could also be using this enormously personal data about people to also set person specific prices based on what they know about you, based on what you're feeling, who you're seeing, what you're browsing, and so we want to make sure that we are looking under the hood and understand what's
going on here. So, for example, you can imagine that a hotel that knows you've already bought plane tickets may show you a higher price than they show somebody who hasn't really decided on where they're going to visit. You can imagine a restaurant that knows you have a one hour lunch break could hike prices for you during that hour. And so these are just some of the types of practices that we could see take hold if this type of surveillance pricing is allowed to develop.
Interesting we're all still feeling the effects of this crowd strike outage, and so many people are shocked about how a company that is so small could just shake up the world like this. What's your take on this and is there something to investigate here.
So as a general matter, I think this really underscores the trade offs between kind of fragility and resiliency, and how when you have more centralization, or when you have enormous dependence on just one firm or a very small number of companies, that can make it so that a single disruption can have cascading effects and really lead to all sorts of breakdowns. And so as a result of this one incident, for example, we saw over three thousand
flights grounded. We saw doctors that were no longer able to prescribe medicines for their patients, We saw courthouses that had to close off proceedings, and so the impact here was significant, and it's really underscoring the importance of making sure we have resilient markets and resilient systems so that a single crash like this doesn't lead to so much outsized disruption.
I do have to take a moment to talk about the presidential election. A number of prominent tech folks have endorsed President Trump for a variety of reasons, but I have heard specifically multiple tech executives and investors complain about how they can't do deals on your watch, you have any concerns that your agenda has that all alienated the tech community or could impact the impact of your agenda going forward.
You know, it's been such an honor to serve and then Biden Harris administration, and you know, we're just focused on doing our work. What I oftentimes hear from the business community, including small businesses, including entrepreneurs, is that they want markets to be more open and more fair and more competitive, rather than incumbents being able to squash out
maason competitive threats. I mean, our free enterprise system is one where the best ideas are supposed to win, and we've historically seen that it's the disruptors and entrepreneurs that have been a key vector of innovation. And so our job at the FTC when we enforce the antitrust laws is to make sure that our markets stay open and fair and competitive. And that's something that you know, most businesses and most entrepreneurs should really be able to get behind.
Former President Trump's running mate jd Vance has actually praised your work. In fact, I believe he said that you're one of the few people in the Biden administration that's doing a pretty good job. In his opinion, what do you make of the irony there? And you know, how do you see the FTC moving forward in the next administration.
So I will speculate about what's going to happen in November. I do think we see enormous bipartisan agreement that we need to reinvigorate and double down on anti trust enforcement. We need to make sure that monopolies can't illegally use their power to jack up prices for consumers, to really undermine workers, or really stamp out entrepreneurs in small businesses. And so that bipart is an agreement around the importance of open, fair competition to protect our free and fair
enterprise system is absolutely critical. I mean, you know, just the other week, the FTC release an interim staff report looking at the practices of the pharmacy benefit managers and some of our initial findings. And that's an area, for example, where we see enormous bipartisan concern on both sides.