CONCEPT
Power Asymmetries in the Commons
The structural concentration of decision-making authority that distorts governance processes — in the intelligence commons, the domination of a small number of corporations whose control of AI models, training data, and platform access overrides any community-level governance arrangement.
Ostrom's early work focused on small-scale, relatively egalitarian communities in which her design principles could operate with maximum effectiveness. Her later research, particularly her engagement with large-scale commons and political ecology, confronted directly the distorting effect of power asymmetries on governance processes. A commons in which power is concentrated — in which a small number of actors control the resource, set the terms of access, and dominate the governance process — is a commons in which the design principles must contend with structural constraints that can render them inoperative.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The intelligence commons is characterized by power concentration of an extraordinary degree. A small number of corporations — fewer than a dozen, arguably fewer than five — control the AI models on which the builder community depends. These corporations determine the capabilities of the tools, the pricing of access, the terms under which the