Matt Stoller argues that the current uproar over artificial intelligence misdiagnoses the problem: plenty of regulatory tools and laws already exist, but they are not enforced against the powerful. He catalogs concrete enforcement moves that showed promise - most notably the FTC blocking Nvidia’s proposed Arm merger in 2021 and probes into OpenAI and other firms for deceptive or unsafe AI deployments - then traces a political rollback. Congressional timidity, plus a change in administration, produced a reversal: the new FTC chair removed past enforcement material, set aside penalties (e.g., Rytr), and the Department of Justice signaled it will avoid aggressive AI litigation. Stoller also notes judicial resistance to strong remedies in antitrust cases, citing recent dismissals or toothless rulings against tech monopolies.
The substantive point is that the crisis is not an absence of regulation but an elite consensus that exempts wealth and power from the rule of law. Stoller supplies examples - media and corporate intimidation, anti-competitive practices by dominant firms, and local refusals to enforce housing or consumer protections - to show the pattern. He contends that making AI safe requires applying existing laws: imposing liability on large AI firms, beefing up cybersecurity and corporate risk management, and actually litigating and policing powerful actors rather than creating symbolic new agencies that won’t be enforced.
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