CONCEPT
Public AI Infrastructure
Mazzucato's proposal for publicly funded computational infrastructure that would provide researchers, builders, and institutions with access to AI capability without the dependency dynamics of private platforms.
Public AI infrastructure is Mazzucato's proposal for a public alternative to purely private AI platforms. Not a government-run AI company, but a publicly funded computational infrastructure — compute capacity, foundational models, training data governance — that would provide researchers, builders, and public institutions with access to AI capability without the dependency dynamics that private platforms create. The infrastructure would serve as a competitive alternative, reducing the market power of private platforms by ensuring that builders are not entirely dependent on commercial providers, and as a mission-oriented resource, supporting publicly funded research and development that commercial platforms have no incentive to prioritize. Mazzucato articulated the proposal most directly in her 2024 critique of the UK government's AI Action Plan, arguing that the United Kingdom needs to develop its own public AI infrastructure guided by a public-value framework.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The proposal responds to a structural feature of the AI economy that distinguishes it from previous technology cycles: the capital intensity of