Authors
Emilio Calvano, Giacomo Calzolari, Vincenzo Denicolò, Joseph E Harrington Jr, Sergio Pastorello
Publication date
2020/11/27
Journal
Science
Volume
370
Issue
6520
Pages
1040-1042
Publisher
American Association for the Advancement of Science
Description
The efficacy of a market system is rooted in competition. In striving to attract customers, firms are led to charge lower prices and deliver better products and services. Nothing more fundamentally undermines this process than collusion, when firms agree not to compete with one another and consequently consumers are harmed by higher prices. Collusion is generally condemned by economists and policy-makers and is unlawful in almost all countries. But the increasing delegation of price-setting to algorithms (1) has the potential for opening a back door through which firms could collude lawfully (2). Such algorithmic collusion can occur when artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms learn to adopt collusive pricing rules without human intervention, oversight, or even knowledge. This possibility poses a challenge for policy. To meet this challenge, we propose a direction for policy change and call for computer scientists …
Total citations
20202021202220232024217222620
Scholar articles
E Calvano, G Calzolari, V Denicolò, JE Harrington Jr… - Science, 2020