Intention economy




What is the 'intention economy,' and how can you protect yourself?

In the 1990s, the internet was a bit of a wonderland. It was new and liberating and largely free of corporate and government influence. Thirty years later, I don’t think any of us would describe the internet this way. Worse, if subscribers to the Dead Internet Theory are correct, much of what we see on the internet today isn’t even created by humans anymore—a trend that is likely only to accelerate with the rise of generative AI technologies.

However, a particular kind of generative AI technology, the AI chatbot, is set to usher in something even worse than a dying human internet. If researchers at the University of Cambridge are correct, we’re quickly approaching a new “intention economy,” where reports of our future actions will be sold to the highest bidder. And yes, that’s even scarier than it sounds.
What is the intention economy?

Right now, a large portion of the tech industry operates in a marketplace known as the “attention economy.” This is where social media giants like Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, Snapchat, Pinterest, TikTok, X, and Google’s YouTube vye for your focus and leisure. Traditional media companies like The New York Times, Fox News, and CNN also operate in this space, as do book publishers, music and video streaming services, and film and television studios.

All of these entities want your attention so that they can either sell to you directly (through the cost of a recurring subscription, movie ticket, or book, for example) or, more commonly, so they can sell you and your attention to advertisers (which is how most social media companies monetize the attention economy). But if there’s something that the media companies of all stripes find more valuable than your attention in the present, it’s knowing what you will likely do in the future. This is because if they can accurately predict what you will do next week, next month, or next year, they can monetize the hell out of it.

That’s where the intention economy comes in, and it will be powered by artificial intelligence and AI chatbots.

In December 2024, two University of Cambridge researchers, Yaqub Chaudhary and Jonnie Penn, published a paper called Beware the Intention Economy: Collection and Commodification of Intent via Large Language Models, in which they defined the intention economy as “a digital marketplace for commodified signals of ‘intent.’”

In other words, in the intention economy, companies will learn what you think about and what motivates you in order to predict what you may do in any given situation. They will then sell that information to others who can benefit from knowing your future actions before you make them. The way intention economy companies will collect such precious data—your very thoughts, behaviors, and their evolution over time —is by your use of their LLM-powered AI chatbots.

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