The way AI companies exploit collective data and intellectual property is nothing new. It is simply the latest iteration of a long-standing corporate tactic.
Just as corporations are granted the right to exploit natural resources belonging to all people, they strip these public assets from the common domain, process them into products, and then sell them back to the public. Oil companies drill on public lands, timber companies cut down public forests, mining companies extract minerals from public territories, and fishing companies deplete public waters, all for a negligible price incurred in acquiring what rightfully belongs to everyone.
This deeply entrenched pattern is essentially a legalized, institutionalized theft. It plunders the public through a three-stage cycle: first, by using taxpayer subsidies to fund the exploitation of public resources; second, by appropriating those shared resources without compensation; and finally, by selling the resulting products back to the very people who originally owned the shared resources.
Long before artificial intelligence entered the public eye, social media platforms and tech giants had already mastered the art of data extraction. Facebook collects the most private details of your personal life, your relationships, your opinions, your fears and desires, and then sells this information to advertisers. Google tracks everything you search, every place you visit, and everything you buy, building a personal profile worth far more than anything you receive in return. Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and countless other platforms have built multi-billion dollar empires entirely on user-generated content. The product is never the platform itself; the product is always you.
Even the pursuit of knowledge is not immune. Research findings, often funded by public funds, often end up either locked behind paywalls or handed over to corporations to commercialize for private profit. Pharmaceutical companies benefit from public R&D but set drug prices at inaccessible levels for the general public.
War is perhaps one of the oldest chapters in this pattern. Governments declare it, soldiers fight it, and citizens fund it through taxes and generational debt. Yet companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, and Halliburton have consistently posted record profits during periods of active conflict. Private contractors are paid billions from public defense budgets to perform work that used to be done by the military itself. The reconstruction of war-torn countries, often destroyed by weapons sold by those same contractors, becomes yet another business opportunity. As always, the economic and human costs are borne by the public, while certain private interests reap enormous profits.
The system is not broken. It is working exactly as designed, just not for you.