States can be laboratories of twenty-first century democracy and examples for future US administrations and the world if they pursue public AI investments and applied projects that use AI to demonstrably improve their citizens’ lives in concrete ways: to provide superior services accessible to more constituents, to model fair treatment of workers, and to be more responsive to constituents, including about the settings where people do—and do not—want to see AI used. In a Public AI framework, AI is developed or cultivated by government agencies to provide AI models and services as public goods and to perform a set of tasks for government and/or citizens, with democratic oversight and accountability.