Thibault Schrepel on Computational Antitrust
The New York Times – ICLE affiliated scholar Thibault Schrepel was cited by The New York Times in an item in its DealBook newsletter about Stanford University’s computational antitrust project. You can read the full newsletter here.
If those policing Big Tech had tools as powerful as companies do, they might detect and prevent anti-competitive activity more effectively. Many antitrust agencies around the world are underfunded and overwhelmed, contending with massive amounts of information and fast-moving markets. Automation is a way to “fight fire with fire,” according to Thibault Schrepel, the leader of a new “computational antitrust” project at Stanford.
Fifty antitrust agencies are joining the project, including the U.S. Justice Department, along with legal scholars and computer scientists. They will publish research in a new journal, compare notes on internal practices, hold a workshop and issue a report on what they learn in a year. But Dr. Thibault imagines the work continuing for decades, evolving with technology.