The Race
Building Democracy in the Age of AI
AI is changing who has power.
The Race tracks whether that power is being concentrated in fewer hands — or dispersed in ways that strengthen democratic life.
In one future, AI concentrates power in dominant companies, governments, security agencies, wealthy institutions, and technical elites.
In the other, AI disperses capability, giving workers, communities, public institutions, educators, small organizations, and civic groups more ability to solve problems and shape their own future.
The outcome is not predetermined.
Technology matters. But policy, markets, public institutions, civic imagination, and democratic pressure will decide much of what happens next.
The Central Question
The question is not whether AI is good or bad.
The better question is:
Who gains capacity? Who loses agency? Who gets to decide?
AI could expand access to knowledge, tools, services, education, health care, public participation, and local problem-solving.
It could also deepen inequality, harden institutional hierarchies, weaken labor, increase surveillance, centralize expertise, and make public decisions less accountable.
The race is already underway.
The Point of View
This project has a bias: democracy should win.
But the scorekeeping still has to be honest.
The Race is not about cheering every new AI tool or fearing every deployment. It is about asking what each development does to power, capacity, accountability, and democratic life.
The goal is not to stop AI.
The goal is to shape its deployment so more people can participate in the future it creates.
Latest Scoreboard Reading - May 2026
Mixed, but more contested than expected.
Concentration remains the default path, especially as frontier AI firms move deeper into deployment and organizational redesign. But May also showed a real counter-pattern: state and local governments are beginning to govern AI’s physical and economic footprint through moratoria, utility challenges, tax-incentive reviews, workforce planning, and public engagement.
Bottom line: Concentration still has the stronger structural position. But civic infrastructure is beginning to appear.
See Scoreboard page for more complete information
Latest Signals
A Signal is a short interpretation of something happening now.
It might be a news story, a public contract, a company decision, a state law, a school policy, a local land-use fight, a new AI tool, an infrastructure project, or a workforce shift.
Each Signal asks:
What happened? Who gained capacity? Who lost agency? Who gets to decide?
We will post here the latest signals. A longer list will be kept at the Signals page.
The Mythos Fight Shows a New Kind of AI Concentration Risk Posted June 28, 3 min. read
The fight over Anthropic’s Mythos model is not just a one-off dispute over cybersecurity risk. It may be an early warning that national security is becoming a new path for concentrating control over frontier AI—not only in big companies, but also in the federal government.
Can Frontier AI Become Civic Infrastructure? Posted June 25, 2 min. read
Europe’s EUROPA project is still early, and many of the most important details remain unresolved. But its basic premise is striking: frontier AI may not have to be only something we rent from private platforms — it might also become civic infrastructure that public institutions, researchers, businesses, and communities can inspect, adapt, and build on.
When the Data Center Brings Its Own Power Plant Posted June 22, 1 min. read
Reuters found that some AI data centers are trying to “bring their own power” through dedicated gas plants, sometimes moving through fast and opaque approval paths with limited public awareness. The issue is not that dedicated power is inherently bad; it is that state and local governments, regulators, and residents need to see and evaluate the full project before AI infrastructure quietly outruns public governance.
AI Is Now a Grid-Planning Problem Posted June 22, 2 min. read
FERC is pushing regional grid operators to update the rules for connecting AI-scale electricity users, so the grid can support major new data centers without unfairly shifting costs to existing ratepayers. The signal is that AI has become large enough to require serious public infrastructure governance: more power will be needed, but it should scale under clear grid rules while state and local siting authority remains intact.
Who Holds the Frontier Switch?
A federal order that temporarily cut off access to Anthropic’s most advanced model shows that AI governance is moving from public debate into control over the frontier switch itself. The real question is not whether government should oversee powerful AI, but whether that oversight will be visible, reviewable, and contestable.
Latest Concepts
The Concepts page is the slow-thinking layer of The Race. This is where we develop the ideas that help explain whether AI is concentrating power in fewer hands or dispersing capacity more broadly through democratic society.
Concept essays draw from three sources: historical parallels, current academic and policy research, and ongoing interpretation of the race between concentration and dispersion.
We will post here the latest concept essays. A longer list will be kept at the Concepts page.
New technologies often look most dramatic at the beginning, when their first shocks are visible, emotional, and easy to debate. This paper argues that AI’s deeper democratic consequences may unfold more slowly — through defaults, contracts, institutions, infrastructure, and power — creating a window of contestability before temporary advantages harden into durable control.
When the Doorway Becomes the Operating Layer
Convenient digital tools can concentrate power precisely because they work well. This essay explores how platforms move from useful tools, to defaults, to operating layers that quietly shape what people see, trust, compare, buy, and do.
Understanding the Framework
The Race is organized around one question: is AI concentrating power, or dispersing it?
The site has two layers.
The first layer tracks what is happening now.
Scoreboard
The Scoreboard gives a current reading of the Race.
It tracks whether recent developments are pushing AI toward concentration, dispersion, or a mixed outcome.
Signals
Signals are the current events layer.
These posts track real-world developments: policies, investments, institutions, technologies, local fights, market shifts, and public decisions that show where AI may be moving power.
Tools
Tools are practical mechanisms for shaping the Race.
These pages track concrete ways that public institutions, civic organizations, workers, communities, and the general public can question, govern, redirect, or build alternatives to concentrated AI power.
The second layer develops the ideas behind the framework.
Concepts
Concepts are the slower, more considered part of the site.
These essays draw from history, current research, and policy thinking to explain the deeper patterns behind the Race.
Key Vocabulary
Key Vocabulary defines the core terms used across the site.
This is the shared language for understanding concentration, dispersion, civic infrastructure, state capacity, democratic accountability, transition shock, and related ideas.
Follow the research as it develops
This project tracks the race between AI concentration and dispersion: who gains power, who gains capacity, and what public choices might change the outcome.
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