The Agentic Assistant: What does Big Tech’s goal of creating a universal digital intermediary mean for society?

  • Panel
  • Orangerie
  • Thursday 21.05 — 16:00 - 17:15

Organising Institution

Open Markets Europe

Europe

Open Markets Europe works to help people and policymakers use competition policy to build stronger democracies, more just and equitable societies, and more innovative and sustainable economies. Part of the Open Markets Institute, it has been a leading contributor to conversations working towards a more competitive and autonomous European digital economy.
  • Academic 1
  • Business 2
  • Policy 3
While AGI remains hypothetical, the emergence of universal digital intermediaries appears a real possibility. AI assistants are increasingly being enhanced with agentic capabilities that enable them to interact with digital content across the internet, as well as with other agents. This represents a fundamentally new, mass-market digital consumer technology that will challenge today's open web, potentially becoming the dominant gateway through which many interact with the digital world. But while it may make our lives more convenient and productive, the creation of a new layer of intermediation in the online realm will also create new opportunities for exploitation and abuse by those who control it, particularly in a concentrated market. In delegating agency, people and businesses risk putting themselves at the mercy of whoever they entrust it to. This panel will discuss how fair competition can shape the landscape of this potentially transformative technology for the better, preventing it from becoming yet another tool that concentrates power in the hands of tech monopolies.

Questions to be answered

  1. What risks does concentrated control of agentic technologies pose to our democracies and our economies?
  2. Will effective competition alone be sufficient to address these concerns, and if not, what other interventions are needed?
  3. What are immediate steps that European policymakers should be taking to proactively shape the market for this emerging technology?
  4. How can we ensure that AI agents promote the interests of their users, rather than the corporations that own and control them?

Speaker

Udbhav Tiwari

Signal - United States

Udbhav Tiwari is the Vice President for Strategy and Global Affairs at Signal. Udbhav’s experience in the technology sector spans both global and regional contexts, where he was formerly the Director for Global Product Policy at Mozilla, with prior roles at Google and the Centre for Internet and Society in India. He has testified before the U.S Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation and been quoted as an expert by CNN, The Guardian, Wired, Financial Times, BBC, and Reuters. Udbhav was previously affiliated with the Carnegie Endowment for Peace and was named to India Today’s “India Tomorrow” list in 2020.

Speaker

Schwartz Ori

OECD - International

Ori Schwartz is the Head of the OECD Competition Division since 2021. He oversees the work to promote sound competition enforcement and procompetitive regulatory policies, and support the OECD’s Competition Committee.