Essay
Governments are beginning to decide who can access frontier AI, under what safeguards, and through which trusted-user systems. The challenge is to address real security risks without turning advanced capability into permanent discretionary privilege.
Essay
Public models and public compute are only the beginning. AI becomes public infrastructure when governments and civic institutions can use, adapt, govern, and sustain it without becoming permanently dependent on a single vendor.
Essay
AI assistants may begin as convenient doorways into information and services, then become the operating layer that shapes what users see, choose, and do. The challenge is to preserve that convenience while keeping the path open, portable, and contestable.
Essay
AI may be overhyped in the short run and underestimated in the long run. The lag before its benefits spread is also a concentration window, when infrastructure, defaults, and dependencies may harden around a few powerful actors.
News
This is The Race: Building Democracy in the Age of AI, a brand new site by Mark Howard that's just getting started. Things will be up and running here shortly, but you can subscribe in the meantime if you'd like to stay up to date and