Levers of Power in the Field of AI

2025-11-05

AI Summary

This study examines how diverse stakeholders—academia, government, industry, and civil society—exert influence over AI governance strategies through power levers amid technological change. Drawing on a neo-institutionalist theoretical framework, it employs customized surveys and qualitative analysis to develop twelve empirically grounded, high-level decision-maker role models. These models elucidate the interplay among individual agency, organizational logics, and institutional infrastructure. The research advances five falsifiable hypotheses and identifies two distinct classes of power strategies: those sustaining institutional stability versus those catalyzing institutional change. It further produces the first dynamic comparative taxonomy of AI governance power levers. The findings offer novel analytical pathways for institutional theory and social movement scholarship, while providing empirically grounded insights for policymakers and organizational practitioners navigating AI governance challenges. (149 words)

Technology Category

• Philosophy and Ethics of AI: AI & Law, Justice, Regulation & Governance
• Humans and AI: Learning Human Values and Preferences
• Multiagent Systems: Agent/AI Theories and Architectures

Application Category

• Social Networks and Social Media: Media and governance, opinion dynamics, filter bubbles, polarization
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Research challenges in human and human-AI computation
• Security and Privacy: Security and privacy of machine learning and AI applications

Abstract

This paper examines how decision makers in academia, government, business, and civil society navigate questions of power in implementations of artificial intelligence. The study explores how individuals experience and exercise levers of power, which are presented as social mechanisms that shape institutional responses to technological change. The study reports on the responses of personalized questionnaires designed to gather insight on a decision maker's institutional purview, based on an institutional governance framework developed from the work of Neo-institutionalists. Findings present the anonymized, real responses and circumstances of respondents in the form of twelve fictional personas of high-level decision makers from North America and Europe. These personas illustrate how personal agency, organizational logics, and institutional infrastructures may intersect in the governance of AI. The decision makers'responses to the questionnaires then inform a discussion of the field-level personal power of decision makers, methods of fostering institutional stability in times of change, and methods of influencing institutional change in the field of AI. The final section of the discussion presents a table of the dynamics of the levers of power in the field of AI for change makers and five testable hypotheses for institutional and social movement researchers. In summary, this study provides insight on the means for policymakers within institutions and their counterparts in civil society to personally engage with AI governance.

Problem

• Examining how decision makers navigate power dynamics in AI implementations
• Exploring how personal agency and institutional structures intersect in AI governance
• Analyzing methods for fostering stability and influencing change in AI field

Innovation

• Using personalized questionnaires for institutional insights
• Creating fictional personas from real decision maker responses
• Analyzing power levers through institutional governance framework