ARTIFICIAL intelligence companies OpenAI and Anthropic are in the process of granting the United States government equity stakes in their companies.
The supposed goal is to share AI-driven economic growth with the public, while managing social and political opinion. The idea is that if the public has a stake in these companies, they are less willing to vote for policies that could undermine them.
How this stake is distributed is another matter, but for now, what matters is that the major AI names see the writing on the wall and are investing in the future goodwill using their equity.
If AI and robotics meet expectations, the result will likely be abundance: Robots and machines work while humans consume. People’s consumption power will come from equities, shares, UBI or public funds, like the ones OpenAI and Anthropic are proposing.
Here’s the important question for the Philippines: Are we capable of gaining that same abundance?
At the moment, the answer is obviously no. We have no AI, robotics or high-tech companies comparable to OpenAI, Nvidia or TSMC. Worse, we are suspicious of AI investments.
If we want the Philippines to be part of a technologically abundant future, we will need investments from the major AI and robotics companies. We allow them to set up their operations here, and in exchange for doing business in the Philippines, they give us the same stakes they gave to the United States.
Fortunately, we are in a good position, politically speaking, since we form the first island chain, and the United States (and its tech companies) has an incentive to keep us on their side. We can leverage that relationship to further integrate our economy with the American-led AI supply chain.
The big question is the cost of this transaction. Our investment and economic system will need to be reformed, but even more importantly, we must face the fact that national sovereignty is no longer enough for a strong state.
Technology is also needed. Without it, the state becomes weak and weak countries have even less sovereignty than those who are prepared to sit at the bargaining table./PN
