Gordon Ritter: who owns the intelligence economy?

The rules governing the AI economy are still being written, and no one has decided yet who owns the valuable traces left behind by people as they interact with systems. These traces include corrections, judgment calls, reasoning, workarounds, and other work not found in manuals. Radio broadcasting in the 1920s serves as a historical parallel, where broadcasters claimed control over radio frequencies before the law could follow, leading to bureaucratic battles and regulation.

Currently, the most valuable resource is human intelligence, which companies extract when building AI on employee work. Companies must shape the rules now to prevent dominant players from setting the terms for the intelligence economy. A social contract for the intelligence economy can be divided into three layers: platform, organization, and individual.

At the platform level, choice is crucial; no single model should become the unavoidable infrastructure of intelligence. At the organization level, sovereignty is essential, ensuring that the learning loops, workflows, and domain expertise built on top of AI belong to the organization. Finally, at the individual level, appreciation is key, meaning that a person's judgment should be worth more when they leave a job than when they arrived.

To facilitate this, companies could provide individuals with a "cognitive passport," a portable, anonymized record of how they approach problems, allowing for the retention of valuable judgment without compromising confidential processes.