Since frontier AI models have already consumed much of the readily available stock of public knowledge on the internet, what remains is the valuable tacit knowledge embedded within organizations. Whoever sets the terms of how this knowledge is teased out and transferred will set the terms of the next economy.
OXFORD—In 1962, the economist Kenneth Arrow identified a fundamental flaw in the marketplace of ideas. Information, he observed, cannot be valued until it is disclosed, but once disclosed, the buyer has acquired it without paying. It is this information paradox that explains why societies create patents: a legal device that lets an inventor disclose an idea while retaining the right to profit from it.