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AI Doesn't Have To Be This Way feat. Alex Komoroske

Feb 10, 2026

Guest

Alex Komoroske

Alex Komoroske, CEO and co-founder of Common Tools and former product leader at Google and Stripe, outlines privacy-first, decentralized computing and resonant computing as an alternative to centralized AI. He discusses embedding policies with data, confidential compute, emergent folksonomies, LLMs as translators of thought, ambient interfaces, and ephemeral, user-owned software. Quick, provocative, and future-focused.

01:21:45

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insights

INSIGHT

Policy-On-Data Beats Trusting App Code

Attach explicit policies to data rather than to app code to control usage.
Confidential compute plus remote attestation lets you trust remote runtimes to enforce those policies.

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ADVICE

Delegate Policy Defaults To Trusted Agents

Let trusted experts or organizations set default data policies for non-expert users.
Allow users to delegate policy choice to entities they trust like EFF or a security friend.

insights

INSIGHT

Aggregation Without Identification Is Possible

Useful population-level insights can be built from aggregated, non-identifying signals.
Differential privacy and simple aggregation thresholds can unlock shared benefits without leaking personal data.

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Context Is King: Where Alex's Attention Lies

07:49 • 1min

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Same-Origin Paradigm Limits Data Flow

09:00 • 6min

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Attaching Policies to Data Instead of Code

14:59 • 3min

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Who Sets Policies and Trust Delegation

18:10 • 2min

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Reasonable Defaults and Blurred Photos Example

19:47 • 2min

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Permission Prompts as Responsibility Laundering

21:37 • 1min

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Data Ownership: Shifting Value Back to Users

23:00 • 3min

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Confidential Compute Enables Remote Trust

25:30 • 2min

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Population Insights Without Identification

27:24 • 3min

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Emergent Ontologies and Folksonomies

29:58 • 2min

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Handling Covert Signaling & Tag Capture

32:11 • 1min

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LLMs Lower Cost of Nuance at Scale

33:35 • 8min

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Prompt-Driven Trust and Intentional Defaults

41:53 • 5min

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Ambient Interfaces and Soundscapes for Awareness

47:06 • 2min

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Tyranny of the Marginal User and Customization

49:30 • 5min

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LLMs, The Rise of the Generalist, and Economic Shifts

54:03 • 7min

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LLMs as Universal Translators of Thought

01:00:51 • 2min

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Where Friction Should Live and Meaning from Cost

01:03:06 • 6min

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Small-Scale Alignment: Everyday Product Incentives

01:09:01 • 6min

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Ephemeral Bespoke Software and Situated Tools

01:14:37 • 3min

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Advice: Own Context and Use LLMs to Think More

• Mentioned in 2 episodes

Transparent Society

David Brin

"The Transparent Society" by David Brin explores a future where surveillance technology is so advanced that privacy becomes nearly impossible. The book examines the potential benefits and dangers of such a society, where everyone is constantly watched and recorded. Brin argues that transparency can lead to greater accountability and reduce corruption but also raises concerns about the potential for abuse and the erosion of personal freedom. He suggests that the key to a successful transparent society is to ensure that surveillance is reciprocal, with everyone having the ability to monitor those in power. The book offers a thought-provoking examination of the trade-offs between privacy and security in the digital age.

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• Mentioned in 2 episodes

Echopraxia

Peter Watts

#1960

• Mentioned in 22 episodes

Blindsight

Peter Watts

Published in 2006, *Blindsight* follows a crew of astronauts on the ship Theseus as they investigate a trans-Neptunian comet transmitting an unidentified radio signal. The novel delves into themes of consciousness, free will, artificial intelligence, neurology, and game theory. Narrated by Siri Keeton, a synthesist with a unique neurological condition, the story raises questions about the essential character of consciousness and its necessity for human experience. The novel also features vampires resurrected through genetic engineering and aliens that challenge traditional notions of consciousness and communication.

• Mentioned in 30 episodes

Accelerando

Robert Schultz and Tina Faigen

The Accelerando series by Robert Schultz and Tina Faigen is a highly-regarded piano technique series. It includes seven books that guide students from their first lesson to advanced levels. Each book is filled with motivating studies that support all areas of standard piano technique, making it suitable for both children and adults. The series is designed to provide clear-cut goals for accelerated progress at every age and level.

#23772

• Mentioned in 2 episodes

Standing by words

Wendell Berry

This week go deep with Alex Komoroske, CEO and co-founder of Common Tools, about his vision for a more saner, more intentional tech paradigm in which the historical contingencies that gave us the digital world we have today have been fundamentally reworked.

The version of AI most of us have come to accept or reject looks like corporate-owned super-assistants with all your data. Instead, we could have a decentralized ecosystem where software self-assembles around you—private, personal, and prosocial. Alex speaks on this possible world with authority: he spent 13 years at Google as PM Director on Chrome’s web platform, Search, and AR, and later led corporate strategy at Stripe before co-founding Common Tools with Bernhard Seefeld.

Some of the waypoints in our conversation include: confidential compute, emergent ontologies, where we want friction, the tyranny of the marginal users, the rise of the generalist, the importance of context ownership, and software ephemerality.

We can’t take a reasonable principled stance on the promises and perils of AI without considering the vast unexplored possibility space that Alex opens in this conversation. I’m grateful that I get to share it with you and help light the way for promising alternatives to what many of us have come to accept as “the way things are.”

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Referenced & Related

• The FLUX Collective (team project w/ several people mentioned in this episode)

• Bits and Bobs (Alex’s long-running archive of weekly notes)• Common Ground (Alex’s dialogues w/ Aishwarya Khanduja of The Analogue Group)

• The Iterative Adjacent Possible (Alex on Medium)

• The Runaway Engine of Society (Alex on Medium)

• Thinking like a gardener not a builder, organizing teams like slime mold, the adjacent possible, and other unconventional product advice (podcast w/ Lenny Rachitsky)

• Media and Machines by Anu Atluru at Working Theorys

• Accelerando & Glasshouse & Halting State (three books) by Charles Stross

• The Transparent Society by David Brin

• The evolution of Covert Signaling by Paul Smaldino

• Landscape rules predict optimal superhighways for the first peopling of Sahul by Stefani Crabtree et al.

• The Tyranny of the Marginal User by Ivan Vendrov

• 1,000 True Fans by Kevin Kelly

• Blindsight & Echopraxia (two books) by Peter Watts

• The Computer as a Communication Device by J.C.R. Licklider & Bob Taylor

• Silicon Valley’s quest to remove friction from our lives by Rohit Krishnan

• The Most Valuable Commodity in the World is Friction by Kyla Scanlon

• Bernhard Seefeld

• Situated Software by Clay Shirky

• Das Rad (animated short)

• Geoffrey West

• Mark Pesce

• Fred Turner

• Robert David Steele

Explore hundreds of related podcast episodes in the archives!

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