Steger Discusses Big Data and Artificial Intelligence at AIJA Competition Conference

Kaye Scholer Frankfurt Litigation associate Dr. Jens Steger was a panelist at the AIJA’s fifth annual competition conference, Competition Law Developments in Technology, Media and Telecommunications, which was held in Valencia, Spain from March 3–5, 2016.

Steger’s “Big Data and Artificial Intelligence: A New Frontier for Competition Law?” session assessed the extent to which big data—vast data sets and their analysis, capture, access and use—could affect antitrust concerns, including the way regulators and others even think about certain industries. Key topics included:

• novel competition law and privacy issues that may arise on the basis of big data ownership;
• antitrust policy in relation to privacy and consumer protection;
• impact of algorithms and future artificial intelligence used in order to monitor consumer and competitor activities, accumulate data and react to market changes in real-time; and
• competition concerns with algorithms that companies create in the interest of optimizing individual price settings, enabling price discrimination, and making accurate predictions and decisions learning from previous situations.

AIJA is the only global association devoted to lawyers and in-house counsel 45 years old and younger. Through a wide range of meetings, seminars, law courses and advocacy, AIJA promotes professional cooperation and friendship among young career-building legal professionals on an international stage.