Data is Infrastructure

Elettra Bietti argues that data plays an infrastructural role in the AI and digital platform economy, and that such a view of data as infrastructure already figures into (e.g.) antitrust law. "The growing focus of antitrust regulators on data and their improved understanding of data’s infrastructural role is very salient in the AI space. The dependency of neural networks and generative AI models on large datasets, as well as on huge computing power, storage capacity and sophisticated microchips, suggests that market concentration in this space is almost a certainty."

Bietti's essay, published in Theoretical Inquiries in Law, is available open-access here.