2024 Flagship Conference | Global Fractures in Tech Policy | Competition Policy, Networks, & LLMs

Vivek Krishnamurthy — Moderator | Associate Professor, University of Colorado Law School
Babette Boliek — Professor of Law, Pepperdine University, Caruso School of Law
Henry Hauser — Counsel, Perkins Coie
Richard Whitt — President, GLIA Foundation
Christopher Yoo — John H. Chestnut Professor of Law, Communication, and Computer & Information Science, University of Pennsylvania

The first panel of Silicon Flatirons' 2024 Flagship Conference examined the state of networks, processing, and large language models (LLMs). What are the implications of recent developments for competition and competition policy? On the one hand, large investments – public and private – into broadband infrastructure offer the promise of meaningful, facilities based competition. Meanwhile, the Internet ushered in an era of innovation without permission, where upstart companies ranging from Google to Amazon were able to launch and upend incumbents with relatively low capital expenditures. Does the coming era of large language models, with processing-intensive needs, alter the competitive landscape between incumbent and emerging companies? If so, what are the implications for competition policy?