The UK competition authority is already doing a lot of work in terms of countering the expansion of Big Tech companies across the technology sector, but closer to home, there is another type of anti-competitive threat: AI. We are dealing with threats for which we believe we are well prepared. Deal with it.
The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) is tackling so-called “bridging” in public procurement contracts through a pilot program that applies AI to large amounts of data to identify competing scenarios, according to a report in the Financial Times this week. There is. Companies may have conspired to manipulate the bidding process and artificially inflate costs.
“We know that the procurement market is at significant risk of collusion,” CMA director general Sarah Cardel (pictured above) told the FT. “We now have the ability to scan data at scale, bid data at scale, identify anomalies in that bid data, and identify areas of potential anti-competitive conduct.”
The news comes shortly after the CMA announced an investigation into collusion in school roofing contracts, and last year the CMA fined 10 construction companies £60 million ($75 million) for colluding in contract bids. imposed.