CEI Report: AI Governance Risks 'Misalignment by Design'
A new report argues the primary threat from AI is not technical failure, but the deliberate fusion of corporate and government power.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has released a report arguing that the most significant risk facing artificial intelligence is not a technical glitch, but a political strategy. In the report, titled "Welcome to the Machine: How Schemes to Control AI Are Progressive Tools to Control Society," author Wayne Crews contends that AI is being steered toward a system of centralized social management.
Crews defines this phenomenon as "misalignment by design," which he describes as the deliberate fusion of government power, corporate rent-seeking, and social and economic management. According to the report, this process is facilitated through the use of subsidies, standards-setting, and public-private partnerships. These mechanisms, Crews argues, concentrate authority within government-aligned institutions—a process the report characterizes as the creation of "regulatory dark matter."
The Shift to Political Alignment
For years, the AI safety debate has centered on technical alignment: the challenge of ensuring an AI's goals match human values to prevent accidental catastrophe. However, the CEI report shifts the focus toward political alignment. It suggests that current policy trends, often justified by the need to compete with China, are instead building a centralized system of control. This system, the report claims, favors dominant firms and government agencies over free-market innovation and individual liberty.
As a primary example, the report critiques OpenAI's "Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age." The CEI views this framework not as a safety measure, but as a tool designed to align technology with political power rather than the needs of the consumer. "The real danger is not misalignment by accident," Crews writes. "It is misalignment by design."
Implications for the State
Beyond corporate consolidation, the report warns that AI is being positioned as a justification for a massive expansion of the welfare state. Specifically, the CEI identifies the promotion of mechanisms such as Universal Basic Income (UBI) and public wealth funds as evidence that AI is being used to rationalize a new era of economic dependency.
If AI becomes the "operating system" of the administrative state, the report argues, it could institutionalize censorship, surveillance, and social engineering. This would represent a fundamental shift in the role of the technology, moving AI from a tool for individual productivity and independence to a mechanism for centralized state control.
What to Watch
As governments continue to draft AI regulations and form partnerships with leading labs, the CEI urges a closer look at who benefits from these arrangements. The report concludes that the greatest threat is not a rogue algorithm, but a political agenda. "The greatest AI threat isn’t technological," Crews asserts, "it’s political."