Power concentration
EAI deployment could accelerate the consolidation of economic and political power. Unlocking increasing returns to capital for EAI owners, EAI will decrease employers’ reliance on and responsiveness to the needs of human labor [101].
ENTITY
2 - AI
INTENT
2 - Unintentional
TIMING
2 - Post-deployment
Risk ID
mit1430
Domain lineage
6. Socioeconomic and Environmental
6.1 > Power centralization and unfair distribution of benefits
Mitigation strategy
1. Implement and rigorously enforce antitrust and regulatory frameworks to prevent the monopolistic concentration of AI ownership, data, and infrastructure, while reforming tax structures to redistribute the disproportionate economic gains accruing to AI owners and remove disincentives for hiring human labor. 2. Incentivize and resource the development and deployment of highly capable open-source AI models and decentralized governance systems to democratize access to frontier capabilities and serve as a competitive, technological counterweight against centralized, proprietary power. 3. Guide the trajectory of AI development to prioritize human-centric augmentation over full-task automation, supported by policies that strengthen labor's voice—such as collective bargaining and co-determination of technology adoption—to ensure an equitable distribution of productivity gains.