Scaling Laws Can AI Enable Human Agency?, with Tomicah Tillemann
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Mar 13, 2026 Tomicah Tilleman, President of Project Liberty and former venture policy leader, outlines strategies to restore user control and data portability in an AI-driven world. He discusses risks of repeating the attention-economy, the promise of an intention economy, the need for interoperable, sovereign agents, and how policy and design must align to enable human agency.
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Triad Strategy For User Control
- Project Liberty blends tech, policy, and movement work to give people control over data and AI context.
- Its three baskets are building portability tools, pushing laws like data portability, and organizing ~200 partner institutions globally.
AI Risks Echo Social Media Harms At Larger Scale
- Tomicah warns AI risks mirror social media's attention-driven harms but at far greater scale.
- He highlights advertising and personal-data-fed agents as vectors that could manipulate behavior and civic life.
Intention Economy Versus Attention Economy
- Tomicah contrasts the attention economy with an intention economy centered on user-defined goals.
- In an intention economy, tech faithfully serves declared user intents instead of inferring and manipulating behavior.