Artificial Intelligence Has A Blind Spot: Community Ownership
The AI community still wants to keep all the money. Even if they take all of our jobs.
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The point of capitalism is to concentrate wealth. Capitalism is not interested in distributing wealth widely. Its only interest is in accumulating wealth among a lucky few who just happen to be in the right place at the right time. We live in a winner-takes-all economy with so-called “entrepreneurs” that intend to use intellectual property to “own” the technologies that made them wealthy.
We have been usurped by a new royalty that is eerily quiet about their desire for what Jon Stewart calls, “wealth incumbency”.
On April 19th, 2022, The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) published an article entitled, “How to solve AI’s inequality problem, New digital technologies are exacerbating inequality. Here’s how scientists creating AI can make better choices.” The article makes a startling opening statement:
The economy is being transformed by digital technologies, especially in artificial intelligence, that are rapidly changing how we live and work. But this transformation poses a troubling puzzle: these technologies haven’t done much to grow the economy, even as income inequality worsens.
Remember all those promises about how technology would grow the economy? Maybe the economy isn’t growing because only few lucky people own the technology that is supposed to grow the economy.
What would happen if we could make artificial intelligence community property? Something that anyone could use?
Throughout the article, I saw numerous opportunities where the author could touch upon the point of ownership. Indeed, he does, but only very lightly. Maybe that’s because we’re not supposed to be thinking of the Bayh-Dole Act that allows universities to own patents. From Drexel University:
The Bayh-Dole Act, formerly known as the Patent and Trademark Act Amendments, is a federal law enacted in 1980 that enables universities, nonprofit research institutions and small businesses to own, patent and commercialize inventions developed under federally funded research programs within their organizations.
