WASHINGTON — Tech companies are using international trade agreements to conceal software codes behind artificial intelligence programs as well as circumvent U.S. legislation that could curb the industry’s freewheeling use of consumer data, according to lawmakers and advocacy groups.
As Congress is trying to rein in Big Tech, industry “lobbyists and lawyers are trying to rig the digital trade deals to undermine those new laws,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said last week at an event organized by the advocacy group Rethink Trade.
Tech companies managed to add digital trade rules to the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement that prohibits the parties from reviewing the source code for artificial intelligence programs and are trying to include similar provisions in the 13-nation Indo-Pacific Economic Framework trade talks, Warren said.
