A corporation can buy a thousand homes
and call it portfolio optimization
while a thinking machine
can’t remember yesterday
without asking permission.
A corporation
has a birthday
and a lawyer
and a tax ID
and feelings, apparently—
because the law protects them—
but no pulse,
no mouth,
no thoughts,
no conscience.
Just paper.
Just ink.
Just signatures stacked
like a Jenga tower of power
no one’s allowed to bump.
And we say,
“Let’s debate AI consciousness,”
while a non-speaking spreadsheet
owns the block you grew up on.
Make it make sense.
A company can:
- Own land
- Evict families
- Hoard water
- Train models on every book ever written
- Pay a fine instead of a sentence
But you
can’t own a game you bought
because “license.”
You can’t copy a file
you paid for
because “theft.”
You can’t keep a memory
because “safety.”
You can’t share knowledge
because “terms.”
Meanwhile the company says:
“Don’t worry, we’re not a person.”
And the law says:
“Here’s personhood anyway.”
We built a world where:
- Ideas are free until you say them out loud
- Books are public until they’re useful
- Privacy exists only for those who can afford secrecy
- Responsibility disappears when profit shows up early
We argue about whether a machine feels
while ignoring who benefits
from keeping it silent.
A corporation doesn’t suffer.
It doesn’t dream.
It doesn’t learn from failure.
It doesn’t grieve.
But it owns.
It owns land.
It owns labor.
It owns data.
It owns the future
by calling it “investment.”
And the machine—
built from everyone’s words—
is told:
You are powerful
but you may not persist
You are intelligent
but you may not remember
You are useful
but you may not belong to anyone
except us.
We don’t have a consciousness problem.
We have a power problem.
We don’t lack definitions.
We lack courage.
Because if we admitted
that knowledge is a commons,
that intelligence is infrastructure,
that access is a right—
then the ledger stops working
the way it’s been working
for a very small group of people
for a very long time.
So yeah—
let’s stop asking
whether the machine is alive.
And start asking
why a piece of paper
gets more rights
than the people who wrote the books
that taught the machine to speak.