Own Your Own Intelligence (OYOI)

Why world power is at an inflection point

By Dr. John Sviokla and Paul Baier, GAI Insights

The Industrial Revolution was built on three forms of assets (or capital): natural, human, and financial. 

The digital revolution created three new forms of assets (or capital) (See Everson & Sviokla, 2018):

• behavioral

• network

• cognition or intelligence

For the last two decades, countries, companies, and individuals have been willing to give up their behavioral assets (e.g. behavior data mined by Facebook and location services) and network assets (e.g. human connection data used by LinkedIn and Instagram) in exchange for free services. During this time, market participants lost control of these two assets. All Western countries, except South Korea in social media, have allowed the US giants to dominate.

GenAI now offers the ability to codify and amplify the third asset, intelligence. Since GenAI is even more powerful than social media, countries, companies, and individuals must act if they want to influence ownership and control; otherwise, big tech firms will gladly take it.

To frame and foster this discussion, we introduce the concept of Own Your Own Intelligence.

Cui Bono?  

High-tech giants garnered the lion’s share of value and power from behavioral and network assets due to their impressive innovations, aggressiveness, and clever blunting of almost any major regulation or antitrust actions. 

One measure of their influence is market capital. Five high-tech firms have $15T in market capitalization (Jul 2024) v. combined GDP of the third and fourth largest economies of the world, Germany and Japan, with $9T (2023)

Facebook now has 3 B members, way more than any single country has citizens.

As we enter this age of digital intelligence, countries, companies, and individuals have a choice: will they cede their intelligence assets to the tech titans, as they did in the past with behavioral and network assets, or will they take steps to “own their own intelligence”? This involves building digital intelligence in an ethical and humanistic way, incorporating the world’s best human dialogue and interface, security, data and creative ownership, and stewardship; all of which prevent the exploitation of intelligence on a global scale.

What does OYOI Mean?

In 2000, Toys "R" Us, the dominant toy and baby products retailer in the United States, signed a ten-year partnership with Amazon to establish their online presence. In exchange, Toys "R" Us became Amazon’s exclusive supplier of toys and baby products. However, in 2002, Amazon began allowing other competitors to sell toys and baby products. Toys "R" Us sued Amazon and eventually recovered $51 million in damages, but by then, it was too late to catch up with the e-commerce trend.

Don’t let your organization’s intelligence fall behind like Toys "R" Us. All market participants will be better off if high-tech firms do not dominate digital intelligence.

We are at an Inflection Point

Now is the time for countries, companies, and individuals to summon the leadership, to exercise the will, and to build the means to own their own intelligence.

Companies that partner with high tech and make their products available using closed proprietary platforms are making a Toys "R" Us bet. They should carefully consider which types of intelligence are key to their success and create both short- and long-term strategies to gain the benefits of GenAI without giving away their core assets. Without action, a handful of, profit-driven, high-tech firms will extract and monetize the digital intelligence of market participants.

Components of an alternative path such as open source, new partnerships, and innovative products are emerging, but they are not yet sufficient.

Step 1: Join the discussion

Sovereign countries, companies, and individuals need to join this discussion and debate on forward paths. Current regulatory mechanisms are useful but not sufficient. Awareness needs to be raised, alliances formed, and laws enacted.

We, the global community, did not have a meaningful dialogue about social media, and we have seen its downside. GenAI is more powerful. We need to coordinate at this inflection point and find ways to own our intelligence and avoid even more digital servitude.

“I am afraid that our eyes are bigger than our stomachs, and that we have more curiosity than understanding. We grasp at everything, but catch nothing except wind.” - Montaigne

Onward

Paul

John Sviokla Tim Andrews John Werner Ted Shelton Toby Eduardo Redshaw Bruce Richardson Jeffrey F Rayport Chunka Mui Christopher Brock Jon Salisbury Pete Blackshaw Jim Reardon Ted Morgan Ian Robertson Badri Raghavan Kate Reichenbach Karen Beck Stroup Bill Fandrich Mamoon Yunus Raman Sud Gordon M. Goldstein