WORK
The Algorithmic Rents Research Program
Mazzucato's UCL research collaboration with <em>Tim O'Reilly</em> and <em>Ilan Strauss</em> documenting how AI platforms extract value through market power rather than create it through genuine innovation.
The Algorithmic Rents research program, housed at UCL's Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose, applies Mazzucato's distinction between value creation and value extraction to the platform economy and artificial intelligence. Conducted in collaboration with Tim O'Reilly and Ilan Strauss, the program produced peer-reviewed work in Data & Policy and the Hastings Science & Technology Law Journal coining the concept of algorithmic attention rents — the mechanism by which platforms, having achieved dominant market position, extract increasing value from users through algorithmic control over attention. The program's central empirical finding is that platform revenues derive substantially from rent extraction rather than from genuine technological innovation, and that this extractive component is precisely what funds the compensation packages draining talent from public AI research into private companies.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The program emerged from Mazzucato's broader analytical framework distinguishing value creation from value extraction — a distinction her earlier work had applied primarily to finance and pharmaceuticals. Applying it to AI platforms required new conceptual tools