The Race
AI is changing who has power. It can give workers, communities, public institutions, and smaller organizations new capacity—or concentrate control in dominant companies, governments, and technical elites.
Who gains capacity? Who loses agency? Who gets to decide?
How The Race worksLatest scoreboard
Leaning Toward Concentration, but Still Contested
Window still open
AI power is moving beyond models and software into the physical and institutional systems that determine who holds power: data centers, electricity, water, public procurement, frontier-model access, and workforce redesign.
The overall picture is mixed. Concentrated control is hardening in several lanes, but local governance, public capacity, open models, and new accountability tools are keeping parts of the window open.
Read the latest Scoreboard ReviewSelected arguments
AI-scale data centers are changing the economic development bargain. As power, land, water, permitting and speed-to-market become scarce, governments are gaining leverage to demand tougher terms, greater public benefits and fewer subsidies.
Municipal governments do not need to match AI vendors alone. By connecting existing professional networks, sharing lessons faster, and building a stronger vendor feedback loop, they can gain scale without giving up local authority.
As AI systems learn our preferences, projects, and workflows, portability will determine whether model choice becomes customer power.
Keep exploring
A shared framework
AI power is not being determined in one place. The lanes are not separate races. They are nine views of the same one.
Explore the Nine Lanes