Lina Khan

Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan has been a thorn in the side of Big Tech companies since her 2021 appointment, arguing that major players have become too monopolistic and powerful. Over the last year, she’s turned her focus to how these tech giants might be wielding AI to further consolidate their power. In January, the FTC opened an inquiry into the partnerships between Silicon Valley behemoths (Google, Amazon, Microsoft) and rising AI labs (OpenAI, Anthropic), probing whether they might be undermining fair competition. She warned in February that this new technology is in danger of being “co-opted by some of the existing dominant firms to double down on their dominance.”

Khan has sent out many other warning shots to AI companies engaging in questionable practices. She’s declared that any models trained nonconsensually on data from news websites or artists could be in violation of antitrust laws. She has voiced concern about people’s data being used without their knowledge or consent. And she has also proposed new protections against deepfakes. All of these actions, combined with her position of power, make Khan one of the most prominent forces working to combat AI harms today.