There’s a war being fought for our digital brains.
It’s Us vs. Big Tech.
Here’s how we will win:
Step 1: Start calling them Digital Brains.
The average person is either not following AI advancements at all…
Or is completely overwhelmed with information.
And that’s not because they are dumb.
It’s because all of this is so new…
And it’s changing so fast.
If we want non developers to understand what’s happening we need a simple way to explain it…
A vocabulary that people already know and are familiar with.
Everyone gets what a physical brain is.
And everyone can understand that AI just allows us to have digital versions of a physical brain…
With some super powers.
Step 2: Provide a Simple Alternative to Big Tech Digital Brains
If we want everyone to be able to create, control, and benefit from their own digital brain we need:
- Alternatives to Big Tech digital brains that allow us to maintain ownership and control over our digital brain.
- Alternatives that are as easy to setup and use as going to chat.openai.com and starting to type. (And hopefully even easier)
One or the other is not enough.
To win we need both.
Those with technical abilities can already create, control, and benefit from their own digital brains…
And are already doing so.
But existing options are currently way too complicated for the average person to use.
If the average digital brain owner has to open a “command line” and do anything, we might as well give up.
I’ve worked around technology my entire career and didn’t even know what a command line was until I started this process.
Step 3: Start with a narrow and deep use case that is widely applicable.
Big Tech digital brains are starting by trying to be all things to all people.
Their size and ability to fight the war for our digital brains across every topic and use case is their greatest strength.
But it is also their greatest weakness.
In trying to be good at everything…
They sacrifice the ability to be the best at each specific use case.
Big Tech’s Digital Brain “army” is huge, but it’s distributed broadly.
If we want to win the war for our digital brains we must start not with fighting Big Tech widely and broadly…
But with fighting narrowly and specifically.
We should focus on being the best at specific use cases.
Instead of trying to be good at everything, we should start by being the best at 1 thing.
And that 1 thing needs to be applicable to a wide variety of individuals.
The best digital brain for 1 thing that many individuals care about.
This will make our digital brain immediately useful for its owners.
It will make it easier to use than the blank canvases provided by Big Tech Digital Brains.
And it will start to gather valuable personal data, information and knowledge around this use case in our own digital brain…
Instead of Big Tech’s.
So what do we all care about?
Our Health
Our Personal Finances
Our Relationships
Our Work
Our Entertainment
The initial use case therefore should be chosen from one of these areas.
Step 4: Standardize Digital Brain Use Case Development
To win we need to expand rapidly from our initial use case.
To become the best at more and more use cases…
And to do so faster and faster each time.
This means we need a set of standards for how we go about building new use cases.
Standards that are informed by our learnings from adding each prior use case.
Standards that will make it easier and faster each time we add a new use case.
Standards that make it easy to feed data from our existing hardware devices to our digital brains.
Standards that make it easy to build hardware that feeds our digital brains automatically.
Launching the first successful use case will be hard.
We need to decide what existing code bases we want to use as components.
We need to decide what code we need to write ourselves.
And we need to build the digital brain in a manner that makes it easy for anyone, regardless of technical ability to create, control, and benefit from their own digital brain.
Standards will make it fast and easy to add new use cases…
And to rapidly deploy our digital brain owner “army” to win more and more digital brain use case battles against big tech.
Step 5: Add more use cases
Big Tech digital brains are trying to win the war for our digital brains all at once.
They are attacking all possible use cases from the top down…
To win we need to attack from the bottom up…
Our physical brains aren’t good at learning everything at once.
It’s better for us to learn and see the benefits of our digital brain one use case at a time.
It will allow us to refine our digital brains to be the best at each specific use case
And most importantly…
It will ensure that we are providing more and more of our personal data, knowledge, and information to a digital brain that we own and control.
Instead of Big Tech.
This is the first weapon we will deploy in the war for our digital brains.
With each additional use case, we will be providing more and more of our personal data, knowledge, and information to a digital brain that WE own.
And starving Big Tech digital brains of that same information.
The more we use our own digital brains the smarter and smarter they will become.
And the dumber and dumber Big Tech digital brains will be in comparison.
Step 6: Make it easy for anyone to build additional use cases
Once we have our digital brain development standards in place…
And our first successful use cases…
It’s time to put our digital brain building on steroids.
We do this by making it easy for anyone to build new use cases for their digital brains.
Want your digital brain to keep track of your calendar and provide advice on how you can optimize your time?
Want it to give it your diary and have it provide advice on how to improve relationships?
Or maybe you want it to analyze stocks based on a specific set of criteria you have developed…
Or even have your digital brain help you develop the criteria too.
You can add all these use cases to your digital brain and more.
Just by chatting with your digital brain and telling it what you want to add.
No technical ability required.
This is the second weapon we will deploy in the war for our digital brains:
It’s where we take the learnings from our initial use cases and provide them to everyone.
We don’t have to hire our own “army” to fight Big Tech…
Every digital brain owner will automatically be part of our army…
And help us move from fighting Big Tech one use case battle at a time, to fighting across all use cases…
All at once.
Step 7: Enable Digital Brain Owners to Trade their Data, Knowledge, Information and Use Cases
We are constantly receiving and sharing data, knowledge and information to and from our physical brains.
And there is no reason this shouldn’t be true for our digital brains as well.
We will trade knowledge from our digital brains just like we do our physical brains.
In fact our digital data, knowledge, and information is already being traded.
It’s just being traded mostly by Big Tech companies…
Instead of us.
Let’s say you’re using your digital brain to make investments.
You might be interested in connecting with other digital brain owners who are doing the same…
Comparing notes…
And potentially sharing data, knowledge and information to help the group get better at investing.
Just like an investment club where people get together and share ideas from their physical brains.
Only this time it’s sharing from your digital brain.
This is the 3rd weapon we will deploy in the war for our digital brains.
Once our digital brains have our personal data, knowledge and information we remove the ability for Big Tech to benefit from it…
And we give that benefit to ourselves.
This allows us to connect with other digital brain owners to improve everyone’s digital brains, and deprives that ability from Big Tech.
Step 8: Enable Digital Brain Owners to Monetize Their Digital Brains
Most of us make our livings from the knowledge and experience we have accumulated in our physical brains.
And the same will be true for digital brains.
So the question is not if digital brains will make money.
It’s who will make the money?
The answer is whoever owns the digital brains.
If we own our digital brains we will make the money.
And if Big Tech owns the digital brains they will make the money.
It’s that simple.
Because the data, knowledge and information is digital, it’s also trackable.
This means we can see what’s happening with the data, knowledge, and information we are trading with other digital brain owners…
We can set the rules around what can be done with our data, knowledge, and information…
We can enforce those rules automatically…
And we can decide to put a price on our data, knowledge and information that we want to be paid when it is traded.
Take an investment advisor for example.
Right now people pay an investment advisor to help them with their investments.
As the investment advisor feeds more and more of their data, knowledge, and information to their digital brain, the better and better it will become at investment advising.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s coming from the advisor’s physical brain or digital brain.
As long as the advice is good, people will continue to pay for it.
And the investment advisor can use their digital brain to go from servicing dozens of clients, to serving anyone that has a digital brain.
Automatically.
This is where we go from winning one battle at a time, to winning the war for our digital brains.
Once individuals can make money by owning and controlling their digital brains, who is going to want to use a Big Tech digital brain instead?
The answer is no one.
The knowledge economy will be taken from the Big Tech platforms that currently control it, (and receive way more of the value than they are providing)…
And given to the digital brains that we own and control instead.
The new economy should be built and owned by us. Not Big Tech.
This new digital brain driven economy will not only generate massive wealth…
But that wealth will flow to those that are actually creating the knowledge that drives that knowledge economy.
Which is us.
Executing the above digital brain battle plan is possible today.
But we must not delay.
Big Tech already has a significant amount of our personal data, knowledge, and information.
And they are coming for all of it.
To win the war we must stop feeding our personal data knowledge, and information to Big Tech digital brains.
And start feeding it to our own.