Intention economy update: Musk sells X to Musk AI

The Hollywood Reporter reports that Musk sold X to Musk’s artificial intelligence company xAI:

X, the social platform formerly known as Twitter, has been sold.

Elon Musk said Friday that xAI, his artificial intelligence company, had acquired X in an all-stock transaction that values xAI at $80 billion and X at $33 billion ($45 billion, his original take-private price, minus $12 billion in debt).

That’s $1 billion more than the take-private price of $44 billion in 2022.

“xAI and X’s futures are intertwined. Today, we officially take the step to combine the data, models, compute, distribution and talent,” Musk wrote on X. “This combination will unlock immense potential by blending xAI’s advanced AI capability and expertise with X’s massive reach. The combined company will deliver smarter, more meaningful experiences to billions of people while staying true to our core mission of seeking truth and advancing knowledge. This will allow us to build a platform that doesn’t just reflect the world but actively accelerates human progress.”

The sales pitch: The intention economy is sold as something benign and wonderful for consumers. It is a marketing paradigm that is claimed to focus on empowering customers by prioritizing their expressed intentions and needs, rather than relying on traditional seller-driven methods. The concept envisions a shift where buyers actively shape markets by signaling their specific demands, and businesses compete to fulfill them.

Here’s the reality: Musk intends to ramp up the sales and persuasion power of X. He is using AI in pursuit of a lead and dominance in the intention economy. The intention economy focuses on capturing, analyzing and manipulating human motivations and desires to drive sales and manipulate reality. In other words, the goal is to commodify and conquer the human mind using AI. Accumulating evidence indicates that the intention economy’s AI infrastructure coupled with hyper-targeted data collection creates a ton of opportunity for manipulation and abuse. The intention economy can be weaponized to exploit consumers, undermine personal autonomy, distort markets, and threaten democratic processes. 

LLMs (large language models) like ChatGPT analyze conversational data, search histories, and behavioral patterns to infer desires, creating a marketplace where personal intentions are bought and sold. Generative AI tools process "hundreds of words of rich, contextual data" from users, moving beyond keyword-based targeting to proactively anticipate needs and desires. For instance, Meta’s Cicero model demonstrated the ability to infer human intentions in strategy games, a capability extendable to commerce and politics.

Human cognitive vulnerabilities are targeted to boost sales. The intention economy’s reliance on behavioral data allows people like Musk to identify and target moments of psychological weakness. Precedents in digital advertising, such as targeting beauty products to women during “prime vulnerability moments” like Monday mornings, illustrate how intent-driven systems can boost sales by  amplifying AI’s ability to manipulate people. Digital signals of intent, such as search queries, voice assistant interactions, and social media activity, are collected and auctioned to advertisers. This creates a feedback loop where users’ expressed desires are not merely observed but actively shaped and sold.

The intention economy’s arguably most insidious effect is the erosion of free will. By embedding suggestions into seemingly neutral interactions such as chatbot chats or search results, AI systems bypasses conscious decision-making. Users perceive choices as self-directed, unaware of algorithmic curation or manipulation. This “soft coercion” mirrors techniques described by Shoshana Zuboff in Surveillance Capitalism, where autonomy is traded for convenience. Marginalized groups face heightened risks. Low-income users, often reliant on AI-driven services for essential needs, are disproportionately targeted by predatory practices. For example, AI can steer subprime loan offers to individuals expressing financial stress in chat logs. 

To protect consumers, tech firms could adopt human-centric design  (HCD) principles that prioritize user welfare over engagement metrics like sales, profits and false beliefs instilled in people’s minds. How likely is that to happen? 

In my opinion, very unlikely for at least the next ~5 years, based on current American politics and political conditions. In Pxy’s analysis: While profit-driven firms resist systemic change, the rising costs of reputational damage and regulatory non-compliance make HCD adoption increasingly pragmatic. As Stanford’s Makridis notes, the question is not if HCD will prevail, but how many users must be harmed before industry-wide reckoning occurs? 

Q1: How likely is it that (1) intention economy billionaires will voluntarily adopt HCD to protect consumers, or (2) government will impose regulations to use HCD to protect consumers from intention economy abuses?

Q2: Is it time for mandatory universal public school education in defense against the dark arts like authoritarian lies and demagoguery, intention economy-implanted false beliefs, and intention economy-driven sales to consumers? 

Q3: Is it too late to either implement mandatory universal public school education in defense against the dark arts, or to rely on it even if it is implemented?