Conditionality (Mazzucato)

Conditionality is central to Mazzucato's institutional vocabulary for the AI transition. It means that public support — tax advantages, procurement contracts, regulatory accommodation, access to publicly funded research — should come with requirements attached: requirements for data sharing, interoperability, fair pricing, environmental disclosure, worker protections, and distribution of gains. The current arrangement, in which public support flows to AI companies unconditionally, represents the absence of institutional design rather than a principled choice. Applied to the AI economy, conditionality would redirect innovation — ensuring that technologies developed with public support, trained on public data, and deployed on public infrastructure serve public purposes as well as private ones. Mazzucato has deployed the concept with particular force in her critique of the UK AI Action Plan, arguing that governments must move beyond unbalanced relationships with digital monopolies and stop offering technology companies lucrative unstructured deals with no conditionalities attached.