Report - Fighting for Democracy Amid the AI Race: Designing Tech Industrial Policy to Promote Democratic Economic Governance
As countries around the world rush to encourage greater investment and growth in their domestic AI industries, we argue that unless governments develop industrial policy strategies centered on strengthening democratic economic governance, they risk consolidating corporate control of critical technologies in ways that threaten key democratic and societal objectives. In this paper, we (1) define democratic economic governance and the ways it can be integrated into governments' industrial policy strategies, (2) review the ways that democratic objectives have, or have not, been included in past tech industrial strategies; (3) look at governments' emerging AI industrial strategies and the threats they pose to democratic and societal objectives, and (4) discuss what an AI industrial policy strategy centered on democratic economic governance would look like and achieve.