Christie’s Art & Tech Summit maestro, @devangt, set up a brilliant panel that I moderated with ARK Invest's @CathieDWood and Signal's President @mer__edith✨synapse magic✨Cathie on AI always leaves one thinking. Meredith taught us two new words: EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY

2/Pre-LLMs, taste making machines told us which media, music and products to prefer and consume. Think TikToks getting teens all over the world to buy the same stuff. For me, Cambridge Analytica ignited a search for a truth making machine to crush the taste making machine.

3/Post LLMs, the stakes are higher. As Stéphan-Eloïse Gras says, we now risk the impact of “belief-making machines.” This led us to Meredith's explanation of EPISTEMIC (aka knowledge) AUTHORITY. Let’s dig into these two words, said together.

4/The machine, broadly, is a handful of companies with the bulk of the power, i.e., compute and money. Meredith explains that the machine should not collect data on us - who we are, where we are, what we prefer - once data is made, EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY has already been ceded.

5/IF the machine has the data, power, *and* can determine our individual preferences, then the machine becomes the arbiter of that knowledge about us, *not us.* As the arbiter of knowledge, this handful of companies ‘create a map of common cause, which we haven't seen in the past.’

6/ Meredith says that a privacy worth fighting for is one that fights EPISTEMIC AUTHORITY so it needs to start before data collection on individual humans. We should be asking, ‘Do you have the right to make data that reflects me at all, and if so, why?’

7/ On the topic of PRIVACY, a common refrain - ‘people don’t care about privacy.’ We found Frank McCourt’s perspective important on privacy versus agency. While privacy is a feature which can be dialed based on preference, the non-negotiable that we can’t cede is INDIVIDUAL AGENCY

8/ Frank’s ‘People’s Internet’ aims to have all social media built on top of @frequency_xyz, a decentralized tech platform that is ready after a five-year build. With AGENCY at the core, the system will incentivize participation as it will drive value to the humans who created the valuable data.

Cathie and I agreed that Meredith would be a perfect addition to the ARK Invest Friday Brainstorm! We are a curious group of investors, academics, and industry experts, aiming to get to the bottom of controversial topics across innovation and the future of everything! Thank you @ChristiesInc from @ARKInvest and @SignumGrowth!!