Tools

AI will not be shaped only by model releases, corporate strategy, or national legislation. It will also be shaped by practical decisions made in public agencies, schools, utilities, workplaces, planning commissions, courts, nonprofits, civic organizations, and local communities.

This section tracks democratic tools that can help shape the Race toward broader dispersion of power.

By “tools,” we mean concrete mechanisms that people and institutions can use to question, govern, redirect, condition, or build alternatives to concentrated AI power. Some tools are formal public powers, like procurement rules, land-use review, utility regulation, labor standards, audits, and public oversight. Others are civic or institutional practices, like public participation, open technical infrastructure, data stewardship, worker organizing, community benefit agreements, or public-interest technology capacity.

The goal is not to pretend that any single tool can “solve” AI governance. The goal is to identify practical levers that already exist, or are beginning to appear, and ask how they might be used to support greater dispersion.

How to Use This Section

The Tools pages are meant to help readers move from abstract concern to practical analysis.

Each page groups tools around a particular area of the Race. For example, AI infrastructure tools focus on the physical systems behind AI: land, power, water, cooling, data centers, transmission lines, permits, and local public costs.

Within each page, we identify specific tools and connect them to concrete examples. A tool might be a planning commission review, a state procurement rule, a public-sector audit, a utility cost-allocation decision, a labor standard, or a public-interest compute program.

Concrete Examples First

We will list tools publicly only when we have concrete examples.

That means these pages will not try to catalog every possible governance idea, reform proposal, or theoretical intervention. We will focus on tools that are visible in actual public decisions, institutional experiments, civic fights, market responses, or policy designs.

As new examples appear, we will add them under existing tools. When a real-world case reveals a new mechanism, we may add a new tool.

Current Tool Categories

AI Infrastructure Tools
Tools for governing the physical systems behind AI, including data centers, land use, electricity, water, transmission, public costs, and local review.

More tool categories will appear as we compile them.