The Enclosure of the Intelligence Commons

Between 1750 and 1850, English Parliament passed thousands of Enclosure Acts, converting common land into private property. The productivity gains were real. The landowners prospered. The displaced commoners — the people who had depended on common land for grazing, fuel, and subsistence — became wage laborers in the factories that the enclosure-driven agricultural surplus made possible. They became, in E.P. Thompson's formulation, the English working class. The Lessig–On AI volume argues that the parallel to AI training is not metaphorical but structural. The accumulated text of human civilization — the intelligence commons — is being ingested by AI companies, processed through proprietary architectures, and returned as commercial products that compete with the works that constituted the commons. The inputs are treated as free raw material. The outputs are treated as proprietary product. The value flows in one direction.