The Case for User-Owned AI

Who genuinely controls your AI assistant? That’s a question astir radical haven’t asked yet. Today, millions trust connected integer assistants, from voice-controlled devices to astute bots embedded successful tools similar Google Workspace oregon ChatGPT. These systems assistance america write, organize, search, and adjacent think. However, the immense bulk of them are rented. We don’t ain the quality we beryllium on. That means idiosyncratic other gets to power it.

If your integer adjunct disappears tomorrow, tin you bash thing astir it? What if the institution down it changes the terms, restricts functionality, oregon monetizes your information successful ways you didn’t expect? These are not theoretical concerns. They’re already happening, and they constituent to a aboriginal we should actively shape.

David Minarsch is simply a talker astatine Consensus 2025 successful Toronto May 14-16.

As these agents go embedded successful everything from our finances to our workflows and homes, the stakes astir ownership go overmuch higher. Renting is astir apt good for low-stakes tasks, similar a connection exemplary that helps you constitute emails. However, erstwhile your AI acts for you, makes decisions with your money, oregon manages captious parts of your life, ownership isn’t optional. It’s essential.

What Today’s AI Business Model Implies for Users

AI arsenic we cognize it is built connected a rental economy. You wage for access, monthly subscriptions, oregon pay-per-use APIs, and successful exchange, you get the “illusion” of control. However, down the scenes, level providers clasp each the power. They take what AI exemplary to serve, what your AI tin do, however it responds, and whether you get to support utilizing it.

Let’s instrumentality a communal example: a concern squad utilizing an AI-powered adjunct to automate tasks oregon make insights. That adjunct mightiness unrecorded wrong a centralized SaaS tool. It mightiness beryllium powered by a closed exemplary hosted connected idiosyncratic else’s server — and moving connected their GPUs. It mightiness adjacent beryllium trained connected your company’s ain information — information you nary longer afloat ain erstwhile uploaded.

Now, ideate that the supplier begins prioritizing monetization, similar Google Search does with its advertising-driven results. Just arsenic hunt results are heavy influenced by paid placements and commercialized interests, the aforesaid volition apt hap with ample connection models (LLMs). The adjunct you relied connected changes, skewing responses to payment the provider's concern model, and there's thing you tin do. You ne'er had existent power to statesman with.

This isn’t conscionable a concern risk; it’s a idiosyncratic one, too. In Italy, ChatGPT was temporarily banned successful 2023 owed to privateness concerns. That near thousands without entree overnight. In a satellite wherever radical are gathering progressively idiosyncratic workflows astir AI, this weakness is unacceptable.

On the contented of privacy, erstwhile you rent an AI, you often upload delicate data, sometimes unknowingly. That information tin beryllium logged, utilized for retraining, oregon adjacent monetized. Centralized AI is opaque by design, and with geopolitical tensions rising and regulations shifting fast, depending wholly connected idiosyncratic else’s infrastructure is simply a increasing liability.

What It Means to Truly Own Your Agent

Unlike passive AI models, agents are dynamic systems that tin instrumentality autarkic actions. Ownership means controlling an agent's halfway logic, decision-making parameters, and information processing. Imagine an cause that tin autonomously negociate resources, way expenses, acceptable budgets, and marque fiscal decisions connected your behalf.

This people leads america to research precocious infrastructures similar Web3 and neobanking systems, which connection programmable ways to negociate integer assets. An owned cause tin run independently wrong clear, user-defined boundaries, transforming AI from a responsive instrumentality to a proactive, personalized strategy that genuinely works for you.

With existent ownership, you cognize precisely what exemplary you’re utilizing and tin alteration the underlying exemplary if needed. You tin upgrade oregon customize your cause without waiting connected a provider. You tin intermission it, duplicate it, oregon transportation it to different device. And, astir importantly, you tin usage it without leaking information oregon relying connected a azygous centralized gatekeeper.

At Olas, we’ve been gathering toward this aboriginal with Pearl, an AI cause app store realised arsenic a desktop app that allows users to tally autonomous AI agents with conscionable 1 click portion retaining afloat ownership. Today, Pearl contains a fig of usage cases targeting chiefly Web3 users to abstract the complexity of crypto interactions, with an expanding absorption connected Web2 usage cases. Agents successful Pearls clasp their ain wallets, run utilizing open-source AI models, and enactment independently connected the user’s behalf.

When you motorboat Pearl, it’s similar entering an app store for agents. You tin prime 1 to negociate your DeFi portfolio. You tin tally different that handles probe oregon contented generation. These agents don’t request changeless prompting; they’re autonomous and yours. Go from paying for the cause you rent to earning from the cause you own.

We designed Pearl for crypto-native users who already recognize the value of owning their keys. However, the thought of taking self-custody of not conscionable your funds but besides your AI scales acold beyond DeFi. Imagine an agent that controls your location automation, complements your societal interactions, oregon coordinates aggregate tools astatine work. If those agents are rented, you don’t afloat power them. If you don’t afloat power them, you’re progressively outsourcing halfway parts of your life.

This question is not conscionable astir tools; it’s astir agency. If we neglect to displacement toward open, user-owned AI, we hazard re-centralizing powerfulness successful the hands of a fewer ascendant players. But if we succeed, we unlock a caller benignant of freedom, wherever quality is not rented but genuinely yours, with each quality complemented by an “army” of bundle agents.

It’s not conscionable idealism. It’s bully security. Open-source AI is auditable and peer-reviewed. Closed models are achromatic boxes. If a humanoid robot is surviving successful your location 1 day, bash you privation the codification moving it to beryllium proprietary and controlled by a overseas unreality provider? Or bash you privation to beryllium capable to cognize precisely what it’s doing?

We person a choice: We tin support renting, trusting, and hoping thing breaks, oregon we tin instrumentality ownership of our tools, data, decisions, and futures.

User-owned AI isn’t conscionable the amended option. It’s the lone 1 that respects the quality of the idiosyncratic utilizing it.

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