I helped build Facebook and saw it go wrong. AI is headed the same way

Every social media company ran on the same logic: If we don’t do it, someone else will. Now, that logic is driving artificial intelligence.

AI could create unprecedented abundance — or a future we can’t take back. How we get to the good outcome is the defining question of our time. Last week’s White House framework proposed a familiar answer: shield the AI industry from liability and let the companies sort it out.

But to make AI serve the public interest, we have to put the public in charge of AI.

If something is going to reshape our lives, we should have a say in how. That’s the definition of democracy.

AI Already Governs You

AI is already shaping what you see, what jobs you’re offered, what loans you qualify for, even who becomes a military target. And you have no say in it. Companies are locked in a race to deploy AI as fast as possible, even as experts raise grave safety concerns. Their CEOs — Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Demis Hassabis, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg — all face the same trap: If I don’t do it, someone else will. And they’re right. Which is why we need to change the rules of the game.

The public is already ahead of Washington on this. Polling from Blue Rose Research shows that 66% of Americans support citizen panels helping set AI rules. That number holds across Trump voters, Biden voters, and swing voters. 79% worry the government has no plan for AI-driven job loss. People aren’t apathetic — they’re locked out.

What “Public Control” Actually Looks Like

“The public in charge” doesn’t mean elections dominated by money and lobbyists. It means citizens’ assemblies: representative cross-sections of everyday people — think voluntary juries — given extensive expert briefing and structured deliberation, then granted real authority to set binding goals and constraints.

Citizens don’t write the code. They decide what the code should be for, with technical experts accountable to them for implementation.

This model has worked for thousands of years. It’s how Ireland broke political deadlocks on marriage equality and abortion that had paralyzed politicians for generations. Assemblies are already shaping AI policy in Taiwan, the UK, and Belgium, producing recommendations on everything from facial recognition to disinformation to the future of work. Unlike elected officials, ordinary citizens have no donors to please, no reelection to chase, and no incentive to serve anyone but the public. 

Public governance changes outcomes. Left to the market, AI will optimize for engagement. For pharmaceutical profits. For replacing workers. For learning, patient health, and empowered workers, democratic governance is the lever that points in the right direction. 

The Infrastructure Already Exists

People around the world — including at One Project, the non-profit I founded — are already building the infrastructure to make this work: participatory platforms for democratic governance at scale.

There’s precedent for this kind of public ownership. We already treat the resources that affect everyone — airwaves, waterways, and beaches — as public trusts. That’s not nationalization. It’s democracy.

AI is poised to generate trillions of dollars in new wealth. But the future where everyone benefits requires the public — not shareholders — to control it: democratically allocating resources toward child care and elder care, retraining programs for AI-related job displacement, and new models of education.

AI is poised to generate trillions of dollars in new wealth. But the future where everyone benefits requires the public— not shareholders — to control it: democratically allocating resources toward child care and elder care, retraining programs for AI-related job displacement, and new models of education.

The Window Is Closing

Washington is moving in the opposite direction. Pundits say the public is too divided, the issues too technical, and the competition with China too urgent for democracy. But democratic oversight is the only way to stop the dangerous AI race and make AI serve humanity.

The cross-partisan demand is already there. The infrastructure is already being built. The question is whether we demand democratic governance before AI goes the way of social media.

If AI is going to reshape all our lives, we the people should decide how. That’s not radical. That’s not even a policy proposal. That’s self-governance. And we’ve never needed it more.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.