Intelligence: Who Owns it?

Speaker

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Andrew Keen

Hello, everybody. It is Saturday, the 18th of July. Last week, it's time, of course, for our weekly tech roundup with That Was The Week, publisher Keith Teare. Last week, he or we asked what time it was, and we concluded that it was a revolutionary moment, but maybe one that wasn't going to turn into a revolution. We headlined the show 10 days that didn't Shake or change the world. And Keith remarked that it was rather like 1905, the failed Russian Revolution, as opposed to 1917. The revolution, of course, both the failed revolution of 05 and of 17 was all about property ownership, who should own the means of production, both the land and the factories in Russia. And we're back. To the question of ownership and property, but for the AI age, and this week, Keith's editorial asks, who owns intelligence? He sees this as the central question. He argues this week, the word AI feels too small. The bigger question is simpler and more political. Who owns intelligence, Keith? What's the argument this week? Who should indeed own intelligence? I like your replacement. I couldn't agree more that intelligence is a better word than AI, thinking more historically in a meta sense.

Keith Teare

Yeah, AI is the tool for both harvesting and delivering intelligence. But the thing in and of itself is intelligence. And it's a much better framing because intelligence encapsulates the entire history of Humanity. I know that you hate that word. Yeah, I hate that.

Andrew Keen

Well, enough patting yourself on the back. We've agreed that intelligence is a better word than

Keith Teare

AI. But I think it's important why it's better. It's better because it's totally clear that no one owns intelligence. No single entity could own intelligence because it is the sum total of our common experience and the future of it. So once you frame it as intelligence being bottled, if you will, then it would be a little like somebody taking ownership of the water supply on the earth and forcing us to buy it from them as they do in these plastic bottles and that being the only way to get water.

Andrew Keen

Yeah, so you're presenting, but it's interesting because we perhaps come to the implications. You bring up water and electricity, but that suggests to me at least, reading your editorial, that you're suggesting that intelligence is a utility, maybe a super utility, maybe a remarkably unique utility, but nonetheless a utility.

Keith Teare

Well... Utility might be too narrow a word because we're already going down the municipal ownership route as soon as you say utility. I think it's just a word that sums up the entirety of human experience. And because of that,

Keith Teare

the idea that it could be owned is already a bizarre idea.

Andrew Keen

Although it's, I don't want to turn this into a An argument between you and I and your friend Elon Musk. But Tim O'Reilly has a very strong editorial this week in The Economist. And he quotes Elon Musk, who argued that SpaceX will become worth more than the rest of the Earth. I mean, it's very much of a Muskian comment. So not everyone would agree with you that intelligence could be owned. I assume that Musk thinks... That if SpaceX essentially owns intelligence, then it will be worth more than the rest of the Earth.

Keith Teare

Well, so that's a measure of current GDP to future GDP. And he's saying that SpaceX will be worth more than current GDP, which, you know, 50 years from now, I wouldn't bet against that being true, but GDP will be a lot bigger by then as well. And so it's maybe not very fruitful to go down that path. I think the more fruitful... Yeah,

Andrew Keen

I mean, but I'm not sure that

Andrew Keen

Musk thinks that Intelligence can or should be collectively owned. A lot of the articles this week are about that. You've got a very strong one from the critic of big tech, Henry Farrell, and of course, the Tim O'Reilly piece. This is all about ownership. You also have your weekly Paul Krugman Stubstack piece, although you don't seem to think very highly of Krugman, so I don't know why you're always including him in the newsletter.

Keith Teare

I often include things I don't agree with. But look, here's the thing. Intelligence has never previously been monetizable in any meta sense. It's always been monetized by individuals, let's say professors writing books or teachers getting paid for teaching students. What we've got for the first time is the possibility that intelligence I actually

Keith Teare

think that's a good thing. So I don't want to be mistaken for being a critic there. I do think that the attempt to bottle and sell intelligence is a good thing. What's bad is who benefits from it. And why is it a good thing? Because the amount of investment required To do that is so huge that only two entities would have the means of doing it, a well-funded private entity or governments. And between those two, I would never choose governments as being owners and operators of intelligence.

Andrew Keen

But this idea of bottling intelligence, I mean, even insiders, even Alex Karp of Palantir, of all people, uh supposedly angry he's very critical of open ai and anthropics attempt to essentially is to put it in your language not just bottle intelligence but own it yeah and presumably charge guys like carp at palantir for access to it

Keith Teare

yeah it's as if they've seized all human knowledge and are selling it back to us which is exactly what they're doing

Andrew Keen

but isn't that what Google did with search, isn't that the Silicon Valley way for better or worse? It's just reflective. It's the nature of things out here.

Keith Teare

Well, that's why I think it's a good thing. I mean, without Google, there wouldn't be intelligent internet search and we would be the worst for it. I actually think that private companies are the only way to innovate rapidly in a competitive framework. And do the best with the technology as it is. So bottling intelligence is the best that it currently is at. And it's going to create enormous wealth. What Karp is partly talking about is price. Are they gouging on price? And he says the answer is yes, they are. Although today, Kimi K3 was announced as being better than

Andrew Keen

So tell us what Kimi K3 is. You talk as if everybody knows. I don't know what Kimi K3 is.

Keith Teare

Kimi is a Chinese model company. It's had Kimi, then K2, then now K3. And each one is better than the previous one, as you would expect. And the one that was released today It's fairly inefficient. It uses a lot of tokens.

Andrew Keen

Okay. And this is part of our wacky races narrative. Over the last couple of years, every week, somebody seems to be pulling ahead a Chinese company, OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, SpaceX.

Keith Teare

Yeah, but there's qualitative shifts. And the qualitative shift today, everyone believes that Claude Fable is almost AGI.

Keith Teare

Well, Kimi is better than it.

Andrew Keen

Better than AGI? How can it be better than AGI?

Keith Teare

No, better than Claude. And so for the first time, it's very clear that you're going to have access to very inexpensive models that are very, very good.

Andrew Keen

Well, I've used Claude. I use Claude every day extensively, and it doesn't seem to me, I mean, it's useful, but it's nowhere near AGI in my mind. But that's another question.

Keith Teare

What do you think is lacking?

Andrew Keen

The ability to write, for example, the ability to think. But leaving aside that, let's get back. And what I don't understand, I mean, I don't, I don't necessarily disagree with you, Keith, but I don't really understand how you get from this idea that everything has to be privatized, that the government is inefficient. I mean, in that sense, you're very much in the Marc Andreessen camp, who is strongly, dramatically against any kind of regulation. I'm not sure you're quite as extreme as Andreessen, but you're certainly in that camp. And the idea that Intelligence can somehow be collectively owned and it will drip down to what you call humanity, whatever that means. How do you go from one to the other? I mean, hold on. You use the example of Google, right? So back in the 90s, you and I were both around then. There was all this talk of collective ownership. Then Google came along and cornered the market in... What at the time at least seemed to be intelligence. Maybe now we think of it as web search. They create massive wealth for a small group of technologists and investors, but not for anyone else. So why is this going to be any different?

Keith Teare

Well, firstly, I think your your supposition is wrong. Google did create enormous wealth for pretty much every American through their pension plans. So I don't agree that.

Andrew Keen

What do you mean that? What does that mean?

Keith Teare

Well, Google's investors were venture capitalists who were investing money on behalf of pensions. And the money was made, large amounts of money were made by those investors, which was distributed to pensioners.

Andrew Keen

So it isn't true that- Yeah, but you could make the same argument then about any public corporation.

Keith Teare

Any public corporation that went through a phase of private investment, yes.

Andrew Keen

It could include Facebook in that. You could include Amazon. But anyway, go on. But you're not talking about collective ownership in terms of the stock market, the public market.

Keith Teare

Well, you kind of are. I mean, if you look at any public company and you look at the founders, by the time that company is listed, the founders typically own 10%-ish of the company. So 90% of the company is owned by investors whose money is coming from funds. And that money is coming from society as a whole through 401ks and all kinds of plans.

Andrew Keen

Well, a part of society, certainly not everybody. I mean, what percentage of Americans own stock? It's certainly less than 50%.

Keith Teare

I believe it's above 60%.

Andrew Keen

Yeah, and of those 60%, whatever it is, I mean, it skews very much to the wealthy in terms of how much

Keith Teare

they want. It's true, but the narrative that it's all about billionaires isn't true. It isn't. There is a societal impact of all these things.

Andrew Keen

I didn't bring up billionaires.

Keith Teare

Well, then the question becomes, could you take that model of ownership, which already exists, And extend it. And I certainly think that's a more interesting discussion than whether the government should nationalize open AI and anthropic, which would be the other way to do it. I think it's a super interesting conversation. And I do think that Musk, going back to your question about Musk, is open to that, as is Altman, open to that. And if that were to happen, It would be a huge revolution in both the creation and distribution of wealth. And then intelligence, having been bottled for the first time, becomes a driver of society as a whole.

Andrew Keen

So why, in your view, if it's so kind of obvious, are guys like O'Reilly so critical? I mean, he makes the argument in this excellent... Excellent piece in The Economist that Musk is building, and let's not just focus on Musk, it's not only Musk, but Musk and his type are building a form of capitalism that Smith would hate because it essentially turns them into monarchs. And in fact, Farrell quotes a slide from one of Peter Thiel's startup classes in which the place of a king in a monarchy and the place of a founder in a startup are rather similar.

Keith Teare

Well, look, Tim isn't wrong that Adam Smith would hate this form of capitalism, but I think that's been true since about the end of World War I and certainly since the end of World War II, as free market capitalism has been replaced by state-managed capitalism. And so the debt markets, the Federal Reserve and other central banks, all of that Smith would hate. Because he was the pure individual capitalist was the center of his universe. So it's not saying a lot to say Smith would hate it. And it's also impossible to reverse. That's the historical stage we're at. And now what you've got because of globalization is corporations that are bigger than countries. That is recent history. 50 years, let's say.

Andrew Keen

Yeah, I mean, bigger in the sense of being more valuable.

Keith Teare

More valuable than countries.

Andrew Keen

I mean, SpaceX, although it hasn't had a great week, is still wealthier, worth more than most countries in the world.

Keith Teare

Yeah. And not only that, but the user base of these bigger companies is bigger than the population of any country, even China. So you've got some new things on the board. Now, you could see all of that as a negative. It wouldn't be very useful because you're not going to reverse it. So rather, I choose to see it as a-

Andrew Keen

Okay, so I take your point. Okay, so you're deeply skeptical of government. You don't want some massive nationalized regulation where the government or the Trump national capitalism seems to want to do this, acquire stakes in these companies. Where is it going to come from, Keith? Is it from democracy? You and I have talked endlessly on this show about the dysfunctionality of American democracy, and it's going to come from America because that's the heart of this new economy. Or are we having to rely like kings on the generosity, the munificence of a An Altman or a Musk, who you claim are enlightened, and you and I strongly disagree, certainly on Musk, and I'm very, very dubious of Altman as well.

Keith Teare

Well, Peter Thiel's drawing there is the status quo. That's how it is today. He's completely accurate. The question is...

Andrew Keen

And for people just watching, you've got King Monarchy as the king and the founder controlling the startup, and that's a kind of Zuckerbergian model in the sense that he has special rights and no one can tell him what to do.

Keith Teare

Right. So I think that is the status quo. Therefore, I think Musk and Altman and Amadai and the CEO of Microsoft and Google and Amazon, they're all important. They're all important players.

Andrew Keen

But let's be clear, the CEOs of Microsoft and Google are very different from a Zuckerberg or a Musk. And I'm not quite sure which of the camps Allman and Amidai would fall into. They don't have the kind of power that Zuckerberg has within Facebook, or presumably Musk has within SpaceX.

Keith Teare

Well, I'll just correct you. Larry and Sergey, not the CEO, they have all the voting shares at Google.