Should we relegate the authority to use a significant amount of power and a disastrous situation. Where human beings may not be able to respond quickly enough, effective enough or intelligently enough in order to process the doctor whatever. These are Great Questions because they raise the question of what are we developing ai for . It started off, if we forget the first few years with a scientific experiment and again its a those be something which makes our life better and easy. Thats the entire idea about the subculture. For example, if they can make a good decision quicker than a human being and save a life, most people would say thats a good thing, and as racing technology develop, i personally being a technological name and working on this issue can tell you that i see numerous examples where computers are much better than human beings at making decisions which i want them to make because human beings are scared, tired, dont have all the information. Human beings sometimes tonight on the legal instinct that turns out to be a different process which sometimes is the good and sometimes really, really bad. It may not only be a good thing to delegate authority to a machine, and i think the decision we need to make is where we agree the machine comes to help us. Your scenario which is extreme i would rather not pushing make that decision personally. I can definitely identify parts of life were i want machines to help me out, what i really like the fact that id dont need to trust all human beings with everything. But i do not want them to replace is in the things which i care about. This is the type which i think we should have. Before we let Technological Companies and market pressures push us in a direction where not necessarily willing to go. If no one else go ahead. Just to say, we hear quite a bit from the Artificial Intelligence community, the guys out in Silicon Valley about how ai can be beneficial, big catchphrase. They are investing money into trying to determine which was a can be beneficial to humanity but delegating the story commissions on battlefield without meaningful human control the line of which many of them draw, we havent talked about policing, we havent talked about out of control. We are just talking about Armed Conflict of the moment but this is not just in a row of Armed Conflict. Its much broader than that i guess the point at which the campaign, the stop Collar Campaign robot, and much broader, bigger debate and we dont have all the answers. I want to thank obviously the panelists all of you for at least here, begin a process of this debate and helping us really i think you know what some of the key questions and issues are. So thank you all again and thank dan and general panwar. [applause] thank you all for coming for this first part. We hope to see many of you on december 2 in pittsburgh or you can join us by police to go push about cyber deterrence will be one of the panels we will be looking at on december 2. In the meantime i encourage you to download the carnegie app with content of our latest analysis and would like to last but not least as youll to join in thanking the team that is help with his event, particularly lauren and rachel to help with the organization. So thank you very much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] Hillary Clinton is camping in ohio holding a rally in cincinnati at 6 15 p. M. Eastern. A state with the race is tight with a Donald Trump Holding a slight lead. We will take it to the clinton rally live over on cspan. This week on the communicators a discussion about the proposed merger between at t and time warner. Here to discuss it are two men who cover and watch Telecommunications Policy here in washington, harold feld is Senior Vice President of public knowledge, and Scott Wallsten is president of the Technology Policy institute. Lets begin with you. What would this merger mean to at t . What would happen . Guest at t has wanted to buy lots of content. Apparently to seize this is the future of the industry following the comcastnbc merger. At t is hoping to vertically integrate with time warner. Host use a vertical. What does that mean . Guest rather than in horizontal merger to companies who compete directly with each other working. So the attempted at t, tmobile merger would event in horizontal merger and was blocked because of concerns related to that. A vertical mergers we have upstream and downstream company combining. They are in separate markets, so youre not changing the concentration, the industry concentration in either one by putting those together to the Justice Department tends to look at those differently. Generally speaking, vertical mergers are easier to get through than horizontal mergers where you have to show that they will be improved efficiencies from the merger and show that will not be anticompetitive effects but its typically anticompetitive effects are typically less likely in a vertical mergers than horizont horizontal. Host harold feld, what would this mean at this early stage to the consumer of at t or time warner . Guest i do think there is a lot of reason to be very skeptical about this merger. Particularly based on what weve seen and have industries evolve and increasing concentration within the industry, and the wedding of all of the particularly the marquee programming. Not just whatever little clips got to watch on youtube but the big name programming like hbo and big name movies coming out of these studios that are critical for the success of online streaming services. That big concern here i think of the thing that consumers are to be most concerned about is at t is a National Wireless carrier. Theyre also in a lot of other lines of business but they recognize that the shift in watching video is moving from the big screen on the wall to being in handheld devices as well. For at t a lot of that money comes from data overages, limiting on your data cap. Theres also a lot of money in advertising that they are increasingly becoming involved in with the, in fact which is proceeding about this at the ftc that the fcc vote on and one of the things the fcc found and look at broadband privacy was that was like at t have a tremendous window into your lives because as your every device becomes connected to the internet, as you carry a cell phone thats connected to the internet with you everywhere, at t is your provider can see what you get for breakfast out after smart refrigerator, what, you know, when you go to work in the morning, when youre walking by a mcdonalds on the way to work, and can combine that with its content that it would get from this to essentially dissect every element of your life as a consumer, and market it back to you with these advertisements. So thats one very important concern for consumers is you really want at t following you around figuring out how to best sell you stuff. Some people may like that but a lot of people have concerns about that. The other is just the pricing and the locket on the information. At t will have incentives to push people towards its content and away from the content of others. We have some rules about that right now with whats called net neutrality, so they cant directly interfere with my going to a rival in his company. But what they can say is if you want to watch cnn, that wont count against your data cap. But if you want to watch msnbc or bloomberg or fox news on your mobile handset, it will. So they will have this capacity to push people in a particular direction and particularly what comes to things like news, which is all part of this, thats very troubling for democracy. Host lets get lydia beyoud of bloomberg been involved. Shes a senior tech and telecom reporter. Jamaican with a vertical integration is usually less antitrust concern but im curious if both of you can speak to what precise legal and regulatory issues might be raised by opponents to oppose this deal triggered i probably should let herald talk about the legal issues because as an economist i know no laws. But i think and i dont know economics. Together we know nothing. Specifically fell on issues that will be important to one of the things herald mentioned is that time warner will treat content is content, how at t will treat time warner content relevant to other content. Hes right. That is the potentially this kind of vertical merger could be anticompetitive. If they treat their own content heavily from others. Of course, thats going to be probably the Biggest Issue that the Justice Department will want to look at and want to impose the conditions to try to make that not so simple for them. And so that i think will be the biggest one. Herald is bringing in the privacy issue and im not quite sure that fits into the merger itself. It seems like kind of a different issue. But i think its going to be this question of whether at t has both the incentive and ability to foreclose on rivals are raised rifles costs. In trying to think that through, they are going to look at the instance of different size. On the one hand, you could imagine at t would profit by raising rivals costly keeping time warner content from others and so when. On the other hand, at t on to the distaste us about, at t and directv combined have about 25 of the subscribers. And also now matured of internet subscribers to if you try to withhold content then they lose licensing fees and advertising and although this associate with that and other marketing opportunities. Its not at all couldnt even have the incentive to do that. With that being said im sure thats what the doj will primarily focus on. The are a couple things from a legal perspective. One is that there is a big question whether the federal communications commission, the fcc, which one would think would be absolutely in the thick of Something Like this, whether its even with one of our largest imitation providers, our largest News Entertainment producers, but because of the way the law works its not clear what role the fcc will have. There is a lot of speculation that because at t, which is the company that is regular by the fcc, is the one buying time warner, that the deal can be structured in a way that completely avoids fcc review. And scott is right that traditionally but not always but traditionally certainly a lot of the concerns that ive been talking about, the concerns to democracy and news production, the concerns about privacy are more the subject of fcc Public Interest review than the department of justice. So but i do want to emphasize that we are actually at an important shifting point in antitrust, in antitrust law and antitrust review. These are revolution changes. They dont take place overnight. But we have certainly seen within the last decade, first a change in the literature around the trust. Scott has exactly described what traditional antitrust review has been for the last 40 or so years. And if you go to an antitrust lawyer, thats exactly what they will tell you the department of justice has tradition look at. At the same time its important to recognize we have been seeing a gradual evolution, particularly around these kinds of vertical mergers and particularly in these very large, complicated markets. The comcastnbc merger and what happened after that is something that people point to. So on the one and certainly you look at that and say that department of justice refuted and the putting conditions the ultimate uprooted. But on the other with six years of administering those conditions. And as we found out in the comcastTime Warner Cable merger offer, which was again, that was horizontal but a lot of the concern about they came from expanding that vertical integration power with the enhanced reach that they would have after the acquisition. So i think that, in fact, there is a lot more scope and a lot more challenges for at t with regard to some of these vertical issues than we have previously seen. I agree tha there are going e poor challenges for them because of the political environment and so on, and because even if they were able to get rid of, make sure no license is changed hand, there is no way the fcc is going to stay out of it. I think the comcastnbc merger is a good precedent. You say what happened since then, but there hasnt been, what bad things have happened that are related to the merger itself, from comcast and nbc . Both companies are doing pretty well. Nbc was a terrible network at the time of the merger. Most of the critiques ive seen are things that dont have to do with the merger itself. Give some examples. The one that, what has really come up and came up in the discussion of the comcastTime Warner Cable was the building of the department of justice to actually enforce and monitor the behavioral conditions. So the biggest most marquee example was when disney and news corp. Are looking at spinning off hulu and what potential to become a big competitor in streaming. And allocation was that despite a merger condition that said comcast would not try to get it there without, there was evidence that Brian Roberts had gone to the heads of news corp. And disney for making these decisions and setting unit, navy you guys got to consider, comcast might want to invest more in you if you dont do this deal. So a potential new competitor was squashed. This was precisely the danger the department of justice was concerned about. Thats the source of what imposed the condition. And they did know about and to after the fact and into investigating another merger. The department of justice apparently felt strongly enough about it because we never went, because the width attribute we never had a complaint. We never knew for certain but i could point to that. I can point to the effort by, does a startup called concord, which tried to gain access to video programming under the video access condition that wasnt there that would stimulate over the topic that didnt work out very well. Thats a tough one because these are all of negotiations. Sometimes the Cable Companies pay and broadcaster or content creator, this debate is being. Somebody doesnt get on, is it because of what the reasons are talking of which is because it was a negotiation that didnt work . We will never be able to separate that out. I agreed but thats part of the reason why theres such caution. That the old attitude i would say was because we dont know, we should let the merger go through. I think there is an emerging sensibilities of we have a lot of concentration in the market already. We are seeing a lot of difficulty in competitors emerging when we cant prove that its safe, we should be more skeptical rather than let it go through and hope that we have a condition to stop it. I have a question for you both. This merger announcement comes at a Pivotal Point for our nation, and that, of course, is the president ial election. Hillary clinton has taken, shes not really taken a position. She said folks should look into it. But shes not opine. Donald trump has said he would disapprove if he becomes president. What do you think the potential outcome of the election might play, not just on this merger and the federal regulators that may be in charge of it, it also on a deceptively mergers depending on who wins the white house . First of all i think the time is really interesting. Because when donald trump said he would approve merger them ever pointed out th that presidt doesnt have a say on this. But on the other hand, at this point in time the president actually could have a say in it because the president has to appoint whos going to be the head of the next antitrust division and will be the next year of the sec. Potentially they could make this a litmus test of what they want, the outcome they would like to see. So in this case you could see the president having a big effect the least be up on the process be the direction. Of course, what donald trump thinks debate might be Something Different tomorrow. Who knows what he thinks . I do think whats very interesting and important is your right, clinton did the the president ial thing and say well, you know, if i were president i would make sure we studied it very carefully, which is the thing youre supposed to say. This is, though a time when the Democratic Party generally generallycomment serving the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, but even the more centrist wing of the Democratic Party has made it clear that they think that antitrust needs to be revived, strengthen. What i like to call the new new antitrust. The old antitrust, the old teddy felt passionate roosevelt trust, too much power, contador 217 fans. The new antitrust which weve had since the 1960s and 70s that have now become the sort standard antitrust is the economic efficiencies versus the potential for harm, and very sort of technocratic. The new, new antitrust, though its a step further and says well, we need to be concerned about both. We need to recognize the limits of our Economic Analysis that a lot of times we are just guessing, because of the potential dangers of concentration, when we are unsure we should be skeptical rather than let it go through. So i think that, particularly if the democrats are elected we are very likely to see, even if it doesnt impact of this merger specifically, and attorney general and folks at department of justice and other agencies who are much more interested in these new theories of antitrust. Host Scott Wallsten come on its surface doesnt make economic sense . Guest i think, the economic suggesting that its hard to see the arms in it. They are in completely separate markets. Both industries are evolving, and where they will end up, nobody really knows right now. They are all trying different things. It could turn out to be a doubleedged for both of those companies. We have seen that before. It might turn out to be a great idea. Its partly for that reason that if there arent, if you can show that there arent unnecessary harms and that conditions that protect against those arms, that you allow them to experiment. Because if its a