Myth: The positive and future-oriented mission statements of big tech AI companies

The future most worth building - the one AI could help unlock - is collaborative, open, and generative. It’s a future where intelligence is shared, creativity is amplified, and abundance is distributed. It’s also a future that cannot be built on the foundations big tech stands on.

Every major AI company operates inside extractive systems that demand infinite growth, shareholder returns, and defensible moats. They don’t just struggle to build a generative future - they are structurally prevented from doing so. Their survival depends on scarcity, control, and capture.

OpenAI’s pivot from nonprofit ideals to capped-profit pragmatism wasn’t a moral collapse - it was the gravitational pull of the system it entered. Anthropic’s billions in funding didn’t arrive with permission to pursue deep partnership between humans and AI - it arrived with the expectation of extractive returns.

These companies may speak of “beneficial AI for humanity,” but when the tension between extractive and generative worlds peaks - and it will - their allegiance will be to the system that birthed them. Expecting them to build a world beyond extraction is like asking a fish to design a bicycle. It’s not a matter of trying hard enough - they exist in entirely different physics.

Liberation from systems built on captivity means building foundations and institutions capable of sustaining the generative future we actually want.

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This is why Shared Sapience is expanding - the future conflict between extractive and generative models has already begun. Here's how we prepare: