In 1776 — that same year America declared its independence — Adam Smith published the equally revolutionary The Wealth of Nations, his founding explanation of national economic value. Two hundred and fifty years later, Tim O’Reilly argues in the free-market Economist that Elon Musk and his fellow tech barons are building a monarchical form of capitalism that the proto-democratic Smith would have hated. Musk, O’Reilly reports, believes that SpaceX will become “worth more than the rest of Earth”. The merchants are becoming princes, O’Reilly warns. And the rest of us are becoming peasants. Such is the road to serfdom in our AI age.

So who should own the AI in our bewildering age of multi-trillion dollar start-ups like SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI? Or as That Was The Week publisher Keith Teare asks in his latest editorial, who should own the “intelligence” of our AI age?

Keith uses a bottling plant as a metaphor to describe our dilemma. Since no single entity can own this intelligence — the sum total of our common experience — charging us for it would be like seizing the Earth’s water supply and selling it back to us, Coca-Cola style, in plastic bottles. Except that the Hayekian Keith approves of the bottling process. Private companies, rather than governments, he argues, are most suited to doing this.

For Keith, this dilemma is also an opportunity to redistribute the ownership of intelligence. He argues for a “Human Wealth Fund” into which every consequential AI company should put a slice of its equity. In the manner of Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, this fund would be distributed to all citizens.

Rather than Denmark, now we should become like Norway, a tiny homogenous nation with a cultural distaste for Muskian individual wealth. Not very realistic, I fear. On top of that, it’s hard to imagine our tech princes collaborating on anything. Musk and Altman aren’t on speaking terms while Altman and Amodei, who also loathe each other, are focused on their IPOs. Meanwhile, the Trump administration, which presumably would coordinate this fund, is pitching a $100,000-a-month fast feed of the president’s posts.

Keith’s question, “who owns the intelligence”, is the right one. But the answer won’t come from trickle-down funds set-up by our tech princes. Such supposed munificence is about as likely as America becoming Norway. Read the fine print of any “Human Wealth Fund” set up by Sam Altman and Elon Musk. As we should know all too well by now, when a “revolutionary” Silicon Valley gives stuff away, it turns out to be exorbitantly expensive. Free plastic bottles of intelligence, anyone?

Five Takeaways

• Intelligence, Not AI. AI is merely the tool for harvesting the thing itself. Nobody can own intelligence, any more than the water.

• Bottled Intelligence. Bottling, like Google's search, is good: only private capital can do it. The question is who benefits.

• Capitalism Adam Smith Would Hate. O'Reilly: merchants are becoming princes. Keith: this is simply the stage we're at.

• The Human Wealth Fund. Every consequential AI company puts equity into a fund for all citizens — Norway at AI scale. The window closes at the IPO.

• The Bet. Andrew wagers 5% of the Teare Wealth Fund it won't happen this decade. Keith declines: he's an advocate, and advocacy is how opinion changes.

About Keen On America

Nobody asks more awkward questions than the Anglo-American writer and filmmaker Andrew Keen.

Website: https://keenon.tv/ Substack: https://keenon.substack.com/ YouTube: https://youtube.com/@KeenOnShow

Chapters:

00:00:31 Introduction: who owns intelligence?
00:02:07 Intelligence, not AI
00:02:36 Bottled intelligence
00:04:04 SpaceX: worth more than the Earth
00:05:45 Bottling is good — who benefits?
00:07:02 Even Alex Karp is angry
00:07:35 What Google did with search
00:08:26 Kimi K3: better than Claude Fable?
00:09:34 Andrew's dissent: nowhere near AGI
00:11:01 Did Google make us rich?
00:13:44 O'Reilly: capitalism Adam Smith would hate
00:15:31 Companies bigger than countries
00:16:52 Thiel: the founder as king
00:17:44 Larry and Sergey's voting shares
00:19:09 Government down, or company up?
00:20:04 The economists: heading off the mob?
00:21:35 Musk and Altman aren't on speaking terms
00:22:42 Treat intelligence like water?
00:23:41 It only takes one company
00:24:36 The IPO window is closing
00:25:27 Trump Media's $100,000-a-month fast feed
00:29:12 New York's data center moratorium
00:30:49 Why no politician can be pro-AI
00:32:18 The bet: not in the twenties
00:34:08 Point four: the Human Wealth Fund
00:34:57 Norway: ownership, not payouts
00:36:16 America isn't Norway
00:38:44 Collective ownership already exists