An open project for the age of AI
A genius grew bigger crops.
The problem was never the crops.
We’re pointing our intelligence, human and artificial, at the real question: how wealth, work and meaning are shared when machines can do the work.
The story behind the name
In 1996, George Malley suddenly became very, very smart.
In the film Phenomenon, John Travolta plays George Malley, a small-town mechanic who becomes a genius overnight. He turns his new intelligence to growing giant crops, so that more people can be fed.
Watching it in the 1990s, I felt frustrated. The world doesn’t go hungry for lack of food. It goes hungry because of how food, and the money to buy it, are distributed. The real problem isn’t production. It’s the economic system.
If you suddenly had extraordinary intelligence, that is where you should point it. Today we are building that intelligence.
Why now
We are building the intelligence. Not yet the settlement.
A new economic settlement has to be worked out alongside AI, not after the damage is done.
01
Years, not decades
AI could take over a large share of human work far faster than past technologies changed the economy.
02
Wages carry the system
Most people get their share of the world’s wealth through a job. Remove the job and the whole settlement wobbles.
03
Power follows ownership
Whoever owns the machines could hold economic and political power on a scale no one has had before.
Six pillars
It’s not only about money.
Taxing AI and sharing its income matters. But if work stops being the centre of life, we also need to talk about meaning, power, the transition, learning and fairness between countries.
How it works
Agreement is measured, not assumed.
● 1
Collect
Gather the proposals that already exist, from every part of the political spectrum.
● 2
Rate
Score each one openly for consensus and feasibility, with evidence.
● 3
Debate
Test them in public, with people who disagree and AI agents as sparring partners.
● 4
Combine
Build a package that people across divides can actually support.
Our principles: urgency · the best minds from every perspective · consensus across political divides · openness and transparency.
This only works if people who disagree take part.
Economists and engineers, workers and business owners, left and right. If you care how the gains of AI will be shared, there’s a place for you here.
