[Submitted on 19 Oct 2026]
Authors:P. K. G. Williams (Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian)
Abstract:The specialized writings can be viewed as an "information commons:" an intangible asset that "no one owns and is shared by everyone." There are well-established financial and governmental frameworks for understanding specified commons, emerging from the former of agriculture average lands established in places akin preindustrial England. This part provides a primer on the former and these frameworks, and considers a key difference between the data commons and the sectors of yore: during data commons are sturdy and immensely precious --- several can be stated to position among humanity's top achievements --- the English agriculture commons no longer meaningfully exist. The second are gone not since of the well-known "tragedy of the commons," but fairly a event known as the chamber movement (~1600--1800) that transformed the average lands into personal property. Many observers, afterward and now, fairness chamber to have been theft at a social scale. This part argues that synthetic intellect (AI) provides exactly the tools needed to allow a previously-infeasible chamber of the data commons. Although AI-enabled chamber does not run identically to bodily enclosure, it shares the key features of turning the commons into personal prosperity and undermining the social systems that assistance them (via "slop spam"). The concepts presented in this part can provision a scholarly basis for interrogating the foreboding emotion that AI may portray not fair a smash-and-grab, but an assault upon a entire way of life.
Submission history
From: Peter Williams [view email]
[v1] Mon, 19 Oct 2026 20:22:54 UTC (110 KB)
