The Federal Trade Commission and Justice Department’s Antitrust Division will co-host a Spring Enforcers Summit on Monday, featuring FTC chair Lina Khan, DOJ assistant attorney general Jonathan Kanter and senior staff from both agencies discussing mergers and conduct enforcement.

The House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will host a hearing Tuesday, titled “Preserving Free Speech and Reining in Big Tech Censorship.” A list of witnesses has not been released, but Reps. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wa.) and Bob Latta (R-Ohio) teased in a press release it would feature “several people who’ve been silenced by Big Tech.” 

Axios will host its What’s Next Summit on Wednesday, with a focus on artificial intelligence, space travel, the metaverse and the future of work. Guests include NASA administrator Bill Nelson; YouTube Chief Executive Neal Mohan; and Box Inc. co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie.

The Free State Foundation will host its 15th annual Policy Conference on Tuesday, which will focus on internet and communications laws and regulations. Speakers at the event include Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr (R), FTC Commissioner Christine Wilson (R) and Chris Lewis, president and CEO of Public Knowledge.

Fortune will kick off its Global Tech Forum in Guangzhou, China, on Thursday with a theme of “New Frontiers” and a focus on technological innovations in a post-pandemic world. 

TikTok

• TikTok CEO Chew told members of Congress that TikTok parent company ByteDance may still have access to some U.S. data but that won’t be the case once the company implements Project Texas, a plan designed to assuage security concerns by migrating U.S. user data to local servers operated by Oracle Corp.
• Despite Chew’s assurances that TikTok operates independently of Beijing-based ByteDance, members of Congress remained skeptical, with Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-Dela.) telling the executive, “I’ve not been reassured by anything you’ve said so far. I think quite frankly your testimony has raised more questions for me than answers.”
• The hearing is expected to put a strain on U.S.-China relations, particularly as China’s government signaled it would fight any attempt to force Chinese investors to sell their shares of TikTok. A publication owned by the Chinese Communist Party said the hearing “embarrassed the United States before the world.”
• Given China’s protest of a potential sale, the Biden administration is thought to have two paths: ban the app in the United States or revisit an agreement to address national security concerns that would allow the app to continue to operate within the country.
• 16 free speech organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union, sent a letter to members of Congress urging them not to ban the app, warning that doing so would have “serious ramifications for free expression.
• While there has been a bipartisan effort to ban TikTok, Democratic Reps. Jamaal Bowman (N.Y.), Mark Pocan (Wis.) and Robert Garcia (Calif.) rallied to instead push for a broader piece of privacy legislation that would cover all major social media companies. Rep. Bowman, who has a sizeable TikTok following, is against the ban.

Artificial intelligence

• Google has opened Bard, its artificial intelligence-powered chatbot designed to rival ChatGPT, to a limited number of users in the United States and the United Kingdom. The generative AI tool, which is powered by Google’s LaMDA large language model, is designed to carry out natural language-style conversations, respond to text-based prompts from users and will offer a “Google it” button to see what the company’s traditional search engine yields when given the same input. 
• In an interview with ABC News, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he believes artificial intelligence can be “the greatest technology humanity has yet developed” and noted that his company has been in “regular contact” with government officials to discuss the potential negative consequences the technology could have. “I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this,” Altman said, while arguing that releasing ChatGPT to the public will help society adjust to the technology while providing feedback on how people will interact with it.
• Researchers from OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania posted a research paper to a preprint server that found 80% of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10% of its work affected by large language model tools like ChatGPT, and 19% of workers can expect at least 50% of their tasks to be affected by the technology. The paper, which looked at more than 1,000 occupations, determined that industries like data processing services, information services, publishing industries and insurance carriers are likely to have the highest exposure to the technology, while food manufacturing and wood product manufacturing will be among the least affected. 
• Publishers of online content are working to determine how much of their content was used to train artificial intelligence models such as ChatGPT in an effort to seek compensation and potential legal action, according to people familiar with meetings organized by publishing trade group News Media Alliance. Reddit has also reportedly had conversations with Microsoft Corp. about the use of its content in AI training. 

Antitrust

• Microsoft is planning to launch an app store for games set to be available on iPhone and Android smartphones as soon as next year if its $69 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard Inc. is approved by regulators, according to Phil Spencer, chief executive of Microsoft Gaming. The plan to launch the app store, which Microsoft argues will boost competition on mobile platforms, could be made possible by the Digital Markets Act, a regulation that could allow the European Union to designate Apple Inc. and Google as “gatekeepers” in the mobile space and require them to open their platforms to other app distributors. 
• The FTC is preparing to take action on several investigations into Amazon.com Inc.’s business practices in the coming months, including a potential challenge to the company’s $1.7 billion acquisition of robot vacuum maker iRobot Corp., according to people with direct knowledge of the investigations. The FTC is also working on privacy investigations into Amazon’s Ring security cameras and Alexa voice assistants and may pursue an antitrust case targeting potential anti-competitive behavior in its retail operations, ranging from service bundling to using competitor data to its own advantage, according to multiple people with direct knowledge of the investigations.
• Microsoft, accused by rivals of abusing its dominance by bundling its OneDrive cloud storage service with its Windows operating systems, has failed to address the concerns of antitrust complaints raised by competitors Nextcloud GmbH and OVH Groupe SA, opening the company up to a potential formal investigation from E.U. regulators.

Content moderation

• Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) signed into law two bills that will restrict children and teenagers from accessing social media without the consent of their parents. The laws, set to go into effect on March 1, 2024, will require companies to give parents or guardians access to their child’s accounts and will establish an in-state curfew that will bar minors from using the platforms from 10:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. 
• Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) wrote a letter to the executives of OpenAI, Microsoft, Alphabet Inc., Meta Platforms Inc. and Snap Inc. asking for details as to how the companies plan to protect children from potential harms presented by generative AI tools like chatbots. Bennet wrote in the letter that “the race to deploy generative AI cannot come at the expense of our children” and is seeking answers to a number of questions about user safety from the companies by April 28.

Other news

• Gordon Moore, Intel Co-Founder Who Coined Chip Rule, Dies at 94 (Bloomberg)
• The Department of Commerce proposed new rules for companies hoping to access the $52 billion in funding set aside to kickstart domestic semiconductor manufacturing and research, including restrictions to limit recipients from expanding manufacturing, research or licensing with foreign countries of concern including China and Russia. The proposal would also define some semiconductors as being critical to national security, creating tighter restrictions for manufacturers hoping to dip into the semiconductor subsidy program, which is set to start accepting applications in late June.
• Tech firms including Apple, Google and Meta are asking Congress to limit Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, a law that gives U.S. intelligence agencies the ability to collect and view texts, emails and information about users of online services, according to three people familiar with the discussions. The law, passed by Congress in 2008, is set to expire at the end of the year.
• Twitter Inc. announced that starting April 1, it will begin removing “legacy” verified checkmarks given to users of interest to authenticate their identity on the platform prior to Elon Musk’s takeover. Verified checkmarks will still be available to businesses, government officials and users who pay a monthly subscription to Twitter Blue.

96%

The share of large artificial intelligence models that are operated by major technology companies, compared to just 11% in 2010.

1) OpenAI Research Says 80% of U.S. Workers’ Jobs Will Be Impacted by GPT

Chloe Xiang, Motherboard

2) U.S. seeks to prevent China from benefiting from $52 billion chips funding

David Shepardson, Reuters

3) Pulling the Plug on TikTok Will Be Harder Than It Looks

David E. Sanger et al., The New York Times

4) Senators Had Questions for the Maker of a Rent-Setting Algorithm. The Answers Were “Alarming.”

Heather Vogell, ProPublica

5) Microsoft’s new Copilot will change Office documents forever

Tom Warren, The Verge

6) TikTok now has 150 million active users in the U.S., CEO to tell Congress

Carol E. Lee, NBC News

7) TikTok’s Chinese Parent Has Another Wildly Popular App in the U.S.

Raffaele Huang, The Wall Street Journal

8) TikTok bans spread globally

Sara Fischer, Axios

9) Google begins public testing of Bard chatbot

Ina Fried, Axios

10) Our New Promethean Moment

Thomas L. Friedman, The New York Times

• The secret history of Elon Musk, Sam Altman, and OpenAI (Semafor)
• Tech Layoffs Scramble Life in Remote-Work ‘Zoom Towns’ (Bloomberg)
• Online daters are less open-minded than their filters suggest (The Economist)
• The Accidental Truthtellers of the Post-Privacy Era (The New Yorker)
• The Internet Loves Bad News. And That’s Bad. (The Atlantic)
• How AI Chatbots Are Helping Some People Have Hard Conversations (The New York Times)
• Apple is threatening to take action against staff who aren’t coming into the office 3 days a week, report says (Insider)
• China Hits Back on TikTok, Says It Doesn’t Ask Companies for Foreign Data (The Wall Street Journal)
• TikTok’s fate may be decided by the courts (Axios)
• Biden’s Broadband Plan Contradicts Buy American Reality (Bloomberg)
• Here are the early reviews for new AI bots Bard, Ernie, and Bing Image Creator (Semafor)
• France sets EU precedent with 2024 Olympics surveillance arsenal (Politico Pro)
• AI Loves—and Loathes—Language (Wired)
• Social Media Platforms Are Asking Users for Money. They Probably Don’t Mean You. (The Wall Street Journal)
• Amazon’s HR Boss Rejects Employee Remote Work Petition (Insider)
• We’re Drowning in Subscriptions (Bloomberg)
• Americans deserve a better message than ‘Trust us, TikTok is bad.’ (The Washington Post)
• Google and Microsoft’s chatbots are already citing one another in a misinformation s***show (The Verge)
• Twitter Blue relaunched has made just $11M on mobile in its first 3 months (TechCrunch)
• How TikTok broke social media (The Economist)