Generative AI and the Digital Commons

The aim of this paper is to build models of governance for generative foundation models that enable broadly shared benefit. Our initial hypothesis is that data is a high-value lever of governance. Many of these models are trained on publicly available data and use public infrastructure, but 1) may degrade the “digital commons” that they depend on, and 2) do not have processes in place to return value captured to data producers and stakeholders. Separately, we see a need to collect high quality information to understand e.g. the economic impacts of these models.