ROOTNET: EXPONENTIALLY ACCELERATE ADVANCING THE FRONTIER We’re at a critical inflection point. Frontier AI labs are becoming the most powerful institutions the world has ever seen. They are on track to dominate value creation across the economy far more absolutely, and exponentially faster, than any previous set of winners. Such extreme concentration of power enables these labs to shield themselves from competition. It also causes stagnation, as the market increasingly allocates resources to them rather than backing disruptive ideas and people – leading to further concentration and ossification of power, a more zero-sum world, and, inevitably, oppression. A vicious cycle. The only way to break this cycle and keep power in check, so that we build a future of abundance and freedom, is by aggressively advancing the frontier. When we uncover fundamental truths about our world, the rules of the world change. Greater sources of value emerge, leading to more opportunities and to a more ambitious market that backs more disruptive ideas and people – enabling greater competition, more positive-sum growth, and greater freedom. A virtuous cycle that keeps power from concentrating extremely. Unlike previous technology cycles, we have been unable to advance the frontier at the rate necessary to keep power in check. This is why talent, capital, resources, influence, and thus power, are aggressively concentrating at AI labs at an unprecedented rate. Our ambitions have already fallen from wanting to put a dent in the universe to being acquired by a frontier AI lab. This is because AI is fundamentally different from previous technologies. We have a machine with superhuman reasoning capability that is universally applicable, seamlessly adaptable, and instantly distributable. As AI becomes exponentially more capable and ubiquitous, the problems worth pursuing become exponentially harder. To help advance the frontier, you must have an insight that AI – or someone using AI – cannot. Therefore generally, the better AI gets, the more difficult it becomes to advance the frontier. In the case of the smartphone, humanity could imagine far more than Apple ever could. Apple could not compete with the many great ideas built on their platform. But AI has been very different. We are failing to see far beyond what the leading AI labs can see. With a jump in AI capability, these labs can eat much of the work being done on top of them nearly instantly. Therefore, to prevent concentration of power, we must advance a frontier that is exponentially harder to advance, at a rate that is exponentially faster than we ever have. Our world is not set up for this. Firstly, seeing the frontier has become incredibly difficult. To discover great insights, we will need to embark on more difficult, more risky, and longer pursuits. The notion of a company enabled us to tackle much harder ideas by letting us incentivize support to turn an insight into value. Similarly, since discovering insights itself has become much harder, we need the ability to incentivize support for the journeys to discover them. We need the notion of a personal stock – a legal instrument that lets you share equity in your success across your life, with people who can help you succeed. Holding your shares would be a proportional stake in the wealth you will create across your life. By sharing equity in your personal stock, you incentivize people to help you on the journey to discover insights, and broadly, to help you succeed across everything you may ever work on. Personal stocks will enable us to back people who we believe have great potential to advance the frontier – much earlier and much more impactfully. Secondly, we cannot enable and support the greatest contributors to advancing the frontier because their impact is illegible to our present economy. They positively impact our collective ability to advance the frontier, but their impact is not scoped to any specific individual or idea. Which means that we cannot incentivize them through equity in personal stocks or companies. Which is why, like individuals, networks will also need their own stocks. A network stock will hold equity in each member's personal stock, and each member will hold equity in their network’s stock. This design aligns incentives among members, and between the members and the network itself. With this design, networks can use equity to incentivize people to help the network as a whole succeed, even when their impact cannot be scoped to any specific member or company. By making such illegible contributions legible, networks amplify the rate at which they advance the frontier. Lastly, we will be increasingly ignorant about who can even advance the frontier. As advancing the frontier becomes even more difficult, those with the potential to advance it further will be even less conventional. We will increasingly miss out on enabling and supporting them. Therefore, to maximize the rate at which a network advances the frontier, it will need universal basic equity – regularly issuing new shares in the network’s stock to all of its members. This provides even those the market ignores with the freedom to pursue advancing the frontier. And as the network succeeds, they will be able to embark on even bolder, riskier pursuits despite being ignored by the market. Eventually, when their potential becomes more apparent, the market will back them. Without personal stocks, network stocks, and universal basic equity, we will not be able to advance the frontier at the rate we must to prevent concentration of power. We are starting the first network. Our mission is to exponentially accelerate advancing the frontier, to ensure a future of abundance and freedom. Rootnet.