The
past
two
days’
share
price
moves
for
the
six
most
heavily
capitalized
companies
in
the
U.S.
tell
you
all
you
need
to
know
about
why
we
must
urgently
decentralize
the
artificial
intelligence
economy.
The
first
headlines
were
that
the
third-quarter
profits
and
revenue
from
Microsoft,
Alphabet,
Apple,
Meta
and
Amazon
all
beat
or
met
expectations.
Yet,
with
the
exception
of
Amazon’s
on
Friday,
Big
Tech’s
shares
all
sold
off
in
response
to
their
earnings
announcements,
dragging
down
with
them
chip-maker
Nvidia,
the
sixth
member
of
the
group,
whose
quarterly
reporting
is
scheduled
a
month
later.
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01:25
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02:20
Kamala
Harris’
Winning
Odds
Rise
on
Polymarket;
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Goes
After
Immutable -
18:27
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Next
Steps
After
Q3
Earnings -
01:49
Mega
ETF
Inflows
and
Bitcoin
Wallet
Activity
Signal
Further
Bullishness
What
spooked
investors
were
some
daunting
capital
expenditure
numbers
on
AI
computing
power
and
model
development.
Alphabet,
for
one,
said
it
did
$13
billion
in
capex
last
quarter
and
expects
to
do
the
same
in
this
one
while
Meta
upped
its
full-year
projected
spending
to
$38-40
billion.
The
giants
are
in
a
spending
war
as
each
tries
to
outrace
the
others
toward
AI
supremacy.
Each
one
of
them
stands
to
lose
profit
margins
if
it
gets
out
of
control.
Let’s
be
clear:
between
them,
The
Six
are
booking
$1.8
trillion
in
annual
revenues,
a
number
that
would
put
their
combined
inflows
in
10th
place
of
global
country
rankings
if
we
viewed
them
as
a
proxy
for
national
GDP
–
just
behind
the
gross
output
of
Brazil’s
220
million
people.
Meanwhile,
The
Six
have
a
combined
market
capitalization
of
$15
trillion,
capturing
an
astounding
one
third
of
the
entire
S&P
500
index.
Despite
–
or
perhaps
because
of
–
this
unprecedented
scorecard,
these
companies
are
relentlessly
competing
for
world
domination.
Doing
what
great
American
companies
have
always
done,
they’re
unleashing
a
competitive
instinct
that,
in
a
normal
capitalist
economy
of
diversified
goods
and
services,
is
the
core
driver
of
technological
progress.
So,
don’t
worry
about
The
Six.
Worry
about
us.
Because
our
problem
amid
the
dizzying
advance
of
AI
is
definitely
not
one
of
a
shortfall
in
technological
progress.
It’s
that
this
particular
form
of
technological
progress
comes
with
risks
to
human
autonomy
and
safety.
And
to
mitigate
them,
the
question
of
who
controls
AI’s
development
and
whether
their
incentives
are
aligned
with
the
broadest
base
of
humanity
is
fundamental.
Just
as
was
the
case
for
Alphabet’s
Google,
Meta’s
Facebook
and
Amazon’s
marketplace,
the
development
of
these
six
companies’
large
language
models
(LLMs)
and
other
AI
machinery
is
occurring
within
closed,
black-box
systems.They’ve
ingested
the
troves
of
data
we
all
unwittingly
poured
into
internet
sites,
and
have
built
highly
complex
codebases
into
which
no
one
has
visibility.
Between
them,
they
dominate
all
layers
of
the
AI
stack:
the
storage
(Amazon
Web
Services),
the
chips
for
computation
(Nvidia),
the
AI
models
(Microsoft,
with
its
investment
in
Open
AI),
the
data
(Alphabet
and
Meta)
and
the
devices
we
use
to
interact
with
AI
services
(Apple).
They
might
be
competing
with
each
other,
but
they
form
a
vertically
diversified
oligopoly.
Or
rather,
given
the
undeniable
power
that
their
technology
can
wield
over
people’s
lives,
they’re
an
oligarchy.
Indeed,
the
secrecy
around
the
means
by
which
they
exercise
that
power
is
characteristic
of
most
oligarchical
dictatorships.
Toward
the
latter
phase
of
the
Web2
era,
people
eventually
came
to
understand
Bruce
Schneier’s
memorable
observation
that
we
are
not
the
internet
platforms’
customers;
we
are
their
products.
With
that
awareness,
we’re
now
also
finally
opening
our
eyes
to
how
these
companies
have
long
been
incentivized
to
modify
people’s
behavior
in
unhealthy
ways
to
maximize
shareholder
returns.
It
is
no
longer
controversial
to
talk
of
the
psychological
harm
done
by
the
algorithms
of
Facebook,
YouTube,
Tik
Tok
and
their
ilk,
which
were
blatantly
designed
to
exploit
dopamine
releases
to
encourage
continued,
addictive
engagement.
When
Frank
McCourt
and
I
published
Our
Biggest
Fight
in
March
2024,
we
were
overwhelmed
by
parents’
horror
stories
of
the
harm
social
media
had
done
to
their
kids.
And
then
a
Harris
Poll
coordinated
by
NYU
Professor
Johathan
Haidt
found
that
young
people
are
just
as
concerned:
nearly
half
of
Gen
Z
wishes
that
TikTok
and
X
(Twitter)
never
existed,
even
as
83%
of
the
same
cohort
said
they
spend
four
hours
a
day
or
more
on
social
media.
So,
if
we
now
know
of
the
harms,
why
on
earth
would
we
extend
the
same
oligopolistic
control
structure
into
the
AI
era?
AI
will
put
the
Web2
oligopoly
on
steroids.
This
is
why
I
believe
the
creation
of
distributed,
collectively
owned
open-source
AI
is
a
vitally
important
use
case
for
Web3
and
blockchain
technology.
It’s
the
only
way
to
avoid
the
problem
of
misaligned
incentives.
Sure,
there
are
technical
challenges,
such
as
the
latency
that,
for
now,
makes
distributed
machine
learning
inefficient,
the
capacity
limits
of
on-chain
data,
or
the
privacy
risks
inherent
to
public
blockchains.
But
innovators
are
already
hard
at
work
on
outside-the-box
solutions
to
these
problems,
motivated
by
the
huge
economic
and
reputational
payoff
promised
by
overcoming
them.
And
when
they
do,
the
inherent
information
advantages
enjoyed
by
open
systems
over
closed
systems
will
give
decentralized
AI
a
fighting
chance.
Achieve
that,
and
“DeAI”
will
represent
not
only
the
right
moral
path
but
also
the
economic
winner.
Here’s
the
rub:
time
is
not
on
our
side.
And
the
fight
is
heavily
lopsided.
As
cited
above,
The
Six
have
an
unprecedented
$15
trillion
war
chest.
In
the
2000s,
Facebook
and
Google
learned
that
their
high-value
share
prices
gave
them
a
currency
with
which
to
relentlessly
acquire
startups
that
could
either
enhance
or
threaten
their
dominance.
Now,
The
Six
have
even
greater
capacity
to
buy
up
and
integrate
whatever
breakthroughs
in
AI
are
coming,
be
it
in
independent
AI
agents
or
more
efficient
systems
of
compute.
Their
financial
clout
means
that
the
most
important
innovations,
those
that
offer
the
best
hope
for
a
more
decentralized
AI
economy,
are
at
risk
of
being
subsumed
into
their
centralized
system.
Remember,
they’re
competing
with
each
other
and
are
incentivized
to
do
whatever
it
takes
to
win.
To
fight
their
centralized
approach,
we
must
flip
the
paradigm.
Orthodox
venture
capital
will
never
provide
anywhere
near
enough
resources
for
decentralized
competitors
to
take
on
the
big
guys.
The
only
way
is
to
supplant
equity
financing
models
with
full
user-owned,
token-based
systems.
In
the
future,
when
your
home
devices
provide
the
compute
and
deliver
your
privacy-preserved
data
into
open-source
models
that
are
proven
to
act
in
your
interests,
you
will
earn
tokens
for
that
work.
And,
with
that
currency,
you
will
pay
for
all
the
cool
services
delivered
by
your
personal
AI
agent.
It’s
a
new,
distributed
financing
and
payments
system
for
a
new,
decentralized
AI
economy.
It
is
the
only
way.
Yet,
to
succeed,
the
crypto
and
blockchain
industry
has
to
reimagine
itself.
If
startup
founders
see
DeAI
merely
as
a
new
source
of
get-rich-quick
token-pump
opportunities,
or
if
the
leaders
of
the
Layer
1
platforms
now
turning
to
the
field
are
fixated
more
on
applications
that
temporarily
drive
up
the
dollar
value
of
their
tribe’s
cryptocurrency
rather
than
on
those
that
address
real,
economy-wide
problems,
this
movement
will
fail.
To
win
this
fight,
this
industry
must
become
more
interoperable.
It
must
become
more
collaborative.
This
is
not
to
say
we
should
squash
the
competitive
instincts
that
are
vital
to
innovation.
But
it
is
to
acknowledge
a
need
for
better
cross-industry
organization.
Through
collaborative
bodies
such
as
the
new
Decentralized
AI
Society,
different
stakeholders
can
work
with
each
other
to
advance
common
interests
around
standards,
reference
architectures,
taxonomies,
policy
objectives
and
open-source,
cross-chain
protocols
that
everyone
can
use
regardless
of
the
token
they
hold.
We’re
not
building
to
pump
our
bags
or
take
our
token
“to
the
moon.”
We’re
building
to
create
a
new
decentralized
AI
economy
for
the
benefit
of
all
humanity.
Come
join
the
fight.
Note:
The
views
expressed
in
this
column
are
those
of
the
author
and
do
not
necessarily
reflect
those
of
CoinDesk,
Inc.
or
its
owners
and
affiliates.
