Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis

As part of our Technology Marathon webinar series, partners Kristin Lee, Mike Pierides, and Steven Stone recently discussed financial regulators’ increasing focus on artificial intelligence (AI).

Worldwide IT spending is forecast to total more than $5 trillion in 2024, with 10% year-on-year growth of spending on data center systems, according to recent analysis from Gartner. The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions is driving demand for technology infrastructure in order to meet greater data storage and network infrastructure requirements and more compute-intensive workloads.

We recently published a report based on our four-part series on Tech & Sourcing @ Morgan Lewis, in which we consider a number of conundrums facing companies looking to leverage artificial intelligence (AI) as part of their outsourcing arrangements. As outsourcing remains a key tool through which companies can streamline operations, cut costs, and access specialized expertise, the explosive advancements in AI and related technologies have introduced new and exciting opportunities and complexities for companies in implementing and maintaining outsourcing relationships.

The UK Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) recently published an update paper outlining its concerns with artificial intelligence (AI) foundation models (FMs). Market players in this space should remain mindful of the CMA’s growing interest as the regulator continues its dedicated program to consider the impact of FMs on markets throughout 2024, with a further update anticipated in August.

It is no secret that usage of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies continues to expand at a rapid pace. In fact, Flexera’s 2023 Tech Spend Pulse, which is based on a survey of 506 information technology executives across the world, found that investments in AI technologies are surging to a 68% planned increase in use. That figure was the highest of all technologies in the survey.

The European Council adopted the EU Data Act (the Act) on November 27, 2023, representing a major regulatory shift in cloud services and data processing. The Act’s objectives include ensuring fairness in the allocation of value from data among actors in the digital environment and making data more accessible to all in order to open opportunities for data-driven innovation.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been rapidly transforming industries and reshaping our daily lives by ushering in unprecedented opportunities for automation—which naturally has come with some challenges. While AI’s potential is immense, the potential ethical, security, and compliance implications should be carefully examined.

It should be no surprise to readers of this blog that questions about artificial intelligence (AI) have been the hot topic for the past six months. We have previously written posts related to AI contracting pointers, updates from the US Copyright Office and the UK government, and transatlantic developments, as well as copyright risks. This month, we are going to continue the trend and raise some additional issues related to AI that are relevant to our tech and sourcing followers.

In an age marked by remarkable advancements in artificial intelligence (AI), the question of how to effectively govern this rapidly evolving technology has become increasingly pressing. On August 31, 2023, a significant milestone was achieved with the publication of the Governance of Artificial Intelligence: Interim Report by the Science, Innovation and Technology Committee of the UK government (the Interim Report).

Morgan Lewis is hosting our annual Tech & Sourcing Summit in New York on Wednesday, October 25. The summit will include a full day of sessions starting in the morning with breakfast, followed by a networking lunch.