“This is clearly a regulation play” into Microsoft’s “AI dealings”, Zach Vorhies, a former senior software engineer at YouTube and Google-turned-whistleblower, told Sputnik when commenting on a decision by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the country’s top antitrust watchdog, to launch an investigation into the tech giant.
The FTC is reportedly investigating whether Microsoft has violated antitrust laws in multiple segments of its wide-ranging businesses related to cloud computing, software licensing, cybersecurity tools and AI products. The probe was announced less than two months before Donald Trump’s return to the White House.
"A change in administration will likely bring a shift in regulatory attitudes. While the incoming administration may favor reducing domestic AI regulations, it's crucial to establish robust guardrails to prevent advanced technologies from being misused or exported without oversight," Vorhies pointed out.
This is a challenge that is “compounded by the open nature of foundational AI research, such as Google’s pivotal 2017 paper, ‘Attention is All You Need,’ which laid the groundwork for modern AI chatbots.
“While transformer-based architectures seem to be reaching their limits, the next technological breakthrough remains uncertain, as does whether it will be openly shared or closely guarded,” according to the whistleblower.
He also weighed in on Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s recent face-to-face with President-elect Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago residence. Vorhies said the meeting “aligns logically with the developments” related to Meta*’s decision to cut off access to mainstream media content, which “played a decisive role in the election outcome, effectively favoring Trump.”
So “it’s plausible that Zuckerberg will be rewarded by the new administration for this strategic non-participation,” Vorhies concluded.
*banned for extremism in Russia