envisioning and governing ai in the public interest
Applying cross-cutting and Sector-by-sector strategies
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing almost every corner of the political economy at once – how we process information, organize work, communicate, and distribute capital. This change is currently being led by powerful corporations: Google, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, Anthropic, and OpenAI.
This concentration of power risks massive societal, political, and economic harms, including widespread surveillance and manipulation, further damage to journalism and the broader information system, widespread worker displacement, and capture of public infrastructure.
A Democratic Vision
for Artificial Intelligence
We must actively build a policy environment that protects creators, small businesses, and the open press. By restructuring the tech stack to distribute power and opportunity and by using non-discrimination, transparency, liability, and interoperability rules, we can prevent dominant platforms from exploiting industries including manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, the service sector, and our public discourse to fuel their proprietary systems.
Public Interest Over Private Control:
Using Proven Models
Rather than allowing essential digital infrastructure to be governed by the arbitrary terms of service of private monopolies, we must apply historical lessons from the regulation of railroads, telecommunications, and utilities. Structuring the poltiical economy of AI around non-discrimination and interoperability will ensure the technology serves everyone, not just a handful of gatekeepers.
The Open Markets Approach:
Sector by Sector and Cross-Cutting Analysis
The mission of the Open Markets Applied AI Project is to break the concentrations of power in artificial intelligence by advancing innovative power analyses and competition policy solutions. The development of foundational AI models requires massive amounts of computing power, data, and capital—allowing a few dominant tech giants to vertically integrate and lock in their market positions. We combat this corporate capture through a two-pronged strategy: Cross-Cutting Projects and Sector-by-Sector Projects.
Cross-Cutting Projects
Shaping the political economy of AI as a whole.
Breaking the Chokepoints
A plan to restructure the tech stack to distribute power and opportunity, based on lessons regulating similar services and technologies in the past and a vision for a most just, democratic, and prosperous future.
Ensuring an Open and Fair System
Using non-discrimination, transparency, liability, and interoperability rules to ensure providers of AI services provide equal access and service to all businesses and individuals.
Sector-by-Sector Projects
Using sectoral rules to shape specific industrial and economic activities.
Cloud
To reframe the political debate on Data Centers as a debate about how to ensure the stability and resilience of this essential industry.
AI Agents
To understand whether and how the integration of advertising into AI services will increase manipulation and surveillance of individuals users and how to guard against this to ensure the benefits of agentic AI accrue to the public and empower democratic governance.
Journalism
To study how dominant corporations are using AI in ways that restrict core freedoms, distort political discussion, and threaten democracy within information and communication sectors in order to ensure that all people enjoy fundamental human rights and civil liberties.
Setting the Agenda
The Open Markets Institute was the first to host a ground-breaking convening recognizing the profound dangers of concentrated corporate control over artificial intelligence. By bringing together leading experts, journalists, policymakers, and artists, we proposed innovative, structural ways to govern the technology in the public interest.
