Zuckerberg’s AI Future Is For Everyone—But Who Owns It?

Earlier, I posted Can Capitalism Survive Its Own Success? — Profits and Pitchforks, asking what happens if AI increasingly shifts the rewards of economic growth from labor to the owners of capital. Today, The Wall Street Journal’s Meghan Bobrowsky reports on Mark Zuckerberg’s 6,500-word manifesto, The Future Is for Everyone. Zuckerberg makes an optimistic case: give everyone access to “personal superintelligence” and AI will empower individuals, encourage entrepreneurship, create new businesses and spread prosperity. Meta (META), he argues, is trying to put this extraordinary capability into everyone’s hands. Sounds commendable.

However, Bobrowsky’s original article and her follow-up, Five Things to Know About Zuckerberg’s AI Manifesto, add another dimension that bears noting. Bobrowsky correctly notes that Mr. Zuckerberg isn’t simply an observer offering thoughts about society’s future. Au contraire. He controls Meta, a publicly traded platform company competing with some of the most powerful organizations in the world for AI leadership. I will leave it to you capitalists to decipher the significance of that and the role it might play when considering Mr. Z’s manifesto.

AI may very well democratize what people can do. But that’s a different kettle of fish when considering who owns the machinery that allows the minnows to do their own thing. The models, chips, data centers, energy infrastructure and platforms remain largely the property of capital owners—and the enormous future profits expected from them are being capitalized in financial markets today.

Almost certainly, ordinary people will become substantially more productive and prosperous courtesy of AI. What should not be overlooked, however, is the high probability that the owners of AI capital become vastly wealthier still. In that sense, Mr. Z has not addressed the question I raised. But he may have given us another reason to ask it.

For further reading, please see these two articles by the Wall Street Journal:
Mark Zuckerberg Lays Out New AI Vision in 6,500-Word Essay
Five Things to Know About Zuckerberg’s AI Manifesto