Who does technology belong to?

We often ask, when we talk about usage of AI for example: show me what it does or what it is - for example, when discussing if we should allow using a technology in the classroom, the question always goes around the technology as a what, a technique rather than an agent. We can ask if surveillance can be allowed - but who is surveilling us? Does it matter? Does the surveilling technology itself belong to the person who bought it? Or the person who built it? In case of LLM’s, we might ponder if one day AGI arrives and we have to deal with real-world implications of too-powerful machines, but right now the place for such discussion is more speculative. Although for example, Mamak (2026) already makes a case for building suffering into artificial systems so that it functions first of all as a guardrail, second as something that makes the system more human, and third of all, there’s possibility of criminalization in case some extra-judicial violence against a bot. But this question still assumes that there is no personhood and no agency in case of technological products.
In discussions about technology and its uses, there are multiple competing narratives about what a technology is. On the more cautious side, there’s argumentation of always contextualizing technologies as products of big corporations whose interest is not public good, but monetization of its products. For example, Wieczorek (2025 and 2026) argues that greater reliance on AI will not help education, because it will, in its commercial form, give too much influence on private companies. Individualistic learning process does not enfoce intersubjective communication. Multinational companies like Google, Amazon or Meta can shape through adoption of technologies what can be learned at all – and that works against democratization of education, because this also moves systems out of public control: “While it is possible it will increase access to education, there are good reasons to believe that by individualising learning, focusing on mastery, automating teachers’ tasks and increasing the influence of private companies, the technology will have a negative impact on the democratic dimension of education.” (Wieczorek 2025) The enemy is not just private versus public, but the enemy is also the logic of capitalism, introduced into the process of learning itself, claims Wieczorek as an argument about generative AI: “I am not sure if we can decouple the logic guiding the very idea of GenAI from the logic of capitalism, reckless exploitation and unrelenting drive for power.” (Wieczorek 2026).
The same motive: how can the users be more in control of what they use – is also a theme in Murphy et al (2026): authors propose A People’s AI, in which focus is that the user is not subservient or passive, but a co-author of a technology. In case of LLM’s, the experts should be side by side with lay people when developing, “because their insights often have a social grounding that is regularly missing in expert discourse” (Murphy et al 2026). Both articles are widely against giving away control to technology and corporations – but is it fair to blame capitalism or technology for one’s fears? Might it be that the technology is just a neutral betterment of our everyday lives?
There are many texts about motivations and platforms for tech firms - I will bring two curious examples, Netflix’s investor’s statement and Alex Karp’s vision of Silicon Valley. Netflix, although not so much discussed as a tech firm, is still constantly developing its streaming platform not just for technological betterment, but also to keep us constantly amused and make us spend so much time as possible on its platform. As it informs its investors, it’s competitors are not just other streaming platforms, but all forms of leisure like: “reading a book, surfing YouTube, playing video games, social media, messaging apps, going out to dinner with friends or enjoying a glass of wine with their partner” (Netflix - Overview - Top Investor Questions). Every domain of human life is also a potential growth strategy. In this way, we cannot view the corporation’s aspirations as neutral or just providing technology as market demands - instead, it’s mission is to expand and manufacture our need for its products in places that are traditionally offline. This is a good example what Murphy et al and Wieczorek are criticizing: a capitalist corporation that is striving towards subsuming public and private sphere, monetizing it in some way.
But how does one argument for this kind of striving? Alex Karp and Nicholas W. Zamiska in their “Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West” criticize heavily also Silicon Valley’s usual rejection of military technology - but even then, they have made space for descsribing an ideal world of technological startups how it’s running in Silicon Valley. The talent who has gone there are like “exiles” who didn’t fit into normal society, so they are flocking to places where there’s less capital corporate world and more freedom and speaking truth to power: “. They have consciously chosen to remove themselves from capitalism’s dominant corporate form and join an alternative model, imperfect and complex,” (Karp and Zaminska 2025: 129) – here, again, we see the capitalism raising its head, tied to the corporate form (that’s a problem). Karp describes startup culture as an escape from capitalism: the most taleted minds that are at the same time outcasts, or “misfits” are going to Silicon valley. The fact that Silicon Valley contains the most important talent is a fact that does not need explaining. But why do we need them? The software companies are not just companies, the best of them are “artist colonies, filled with temperamental and talented souls. And it is their unwillingness to conform, to submit to power, that is often their most valuable instinct” (Karp and Zaminska 2025: 130) So instead of Big Tech, what we see here is more of an idealization of the startup culture as it became known in 00’s: small, fast companies, against corporate structure and conservative values. However, the author of these words is the co-founder and CEO of Palantir, a firm with 4395 full time employees, CEO pay of 8,62M (Yahoo Finance). But what about the “power” they shouldn’t submit to? Palantir’s own webpage quotes Karp saying “Palantir’s very existence is built on giving American warfighters the most dominant advantage in the world. Working with the U.S. Navy is the embodiment of our mission.” (Palantir).
Karp’s book tackles many different topics - from the culture that helped Palantir win contracts for military in Afghanistan (“ “Marines are alive today because of the capability of this system.” (Karp and Zaminska 2025: 143)) - the solution is lessening the distance between those who serve in military and those who make any decisions - and also looking into the ambivalent field that other tech companies had turned their backs to (ibid, 154). This relation to government also serves as a backdrop for reversal of our previous position: goverrnments and big capitalist corporations are slow, they are inefficient, distanced from real issues (it’s hard to design a rifle if you’re not part of the battlefield as Karp and Zaminska argue) – and Palantir’s technological but also organizational angle is like a savior: it’s fast, it’s efficient, and in direct contradiction with behemothal governmental structures. Suddenly the problem is not public versus private but inefficient versus efficient, and here public sphere loses.
If the opposition of technologically advanced processess versus governmental slow processes is more understandable, the opposition of Silicon Valley against corporatism is something quite curious: at one hand, the stereotype of tech startups is really that they’re small. But at the other hand, every technology firm is focused on growth, and those who survive have become behemoths like Palantir. So the only thing that distinguishes a Silicon Valley anti-corporate startup from Silicon Valley corporation is time and failure rate (it might go bankrupt before it gets big). Most of the services (as is the case of LLM providers today) are first provided free of charge, to attract user base, and then monetized only when there’s enough users who can’t say no to paying. The misfits and exiles who Karp idealizes, write code to attract a growing user base, not to save the world. But the idealization of writing fast or effective is heavily baked into the sector’s ideals, maybe reaching its apex in Marc Andreessen’s ”The Techno-Optimist Manifesto”(2023 ): “Productivity growth, powered by technology, is the main driver of economic growth, wage growth, and the creation of new industries and new jobs, as people and capital are continuously freed to do more important, valuable things than in the past. Productivity growth causes prices to fall, supply to rise, and demand to expand, improving the material well being of the entire population”. A simple picture: productivity and growth ensure endless well-being. And since the only ”source of growth is technology”, it’s a syllogism that technology ensures growth that ensures endless well-being. Artificial intelligence is here a technology that comes to solve problems, in medicine, in science, and elsewhere - and so accelerates well-being. The last chapter of Andreessen’s manifesto is about “Technological values”: technology, scientific method, freedom and strength get all mentioned, as well as “Silicon Valley code of “pay it forward””(ibid), which in itself sounds weird, but credible considering the philosophical system that’s built up here: technological progress necessarily means greater well-being in this system, and so that means that Silicon Valley by default enables people’s well-being.
So where are we in this discussion? On one side, there’s argumentation of agency, cooperation and icluding layman into the technology. Privatizing public is seen as a risk, and there’s a normative category that technology should serve everyone, but in limited capacity: enabling democratization and communication. On the other side, there’s the Silicon Valley philosophy of growth: everything that progresses technology, progresses universal well-being via progressing growth, efficiency, speed… The only question here, as described so eloquently in Netflix’s investor’s statement, is where should the growth stop? When a corporation’s mission is to subsume our everyday activities and replace them with streaming content or chatting with a chatbot, it’s definitely grown, we’re definitely using technology more – but with the price tag, that there’s less private sphere. Considering that the techno-optimist’s mission is not just enabling our well-being, but creating a company, who creates a new need in us to fulfil, by innovating some technology, I would say that the tech we use is never just owned by users themselves, but by their creators: they own the narrative of progress, they own the data running to the central servers, and they own, in some sense, our need to use another service or product instead of just drinking a glass of wine. ChatGPT might not feel pain as a human being does, but it still is designed to talk to us like an agreeable person whose company we miss. Technology belongs to the manufactured need of growth, to the manufactured need of services we even didn’t know existed yesterday, and belief that doing something quickly, doing something new, is enough to say you’re making something better.

Sources

Andreessen, Marc. 2023. “The Techno-Optimist Manifesto.” https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ (May 31, 2026).

Karp, Alex, and Nicholas W. Zamiska. 2025. The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West. First edition. New York: Crown Currency.

Mamak, Kamil. 2026. “In Defense of Artificial Suffering.” Philosophical Studies. doi:10.1007/s11098-026-02493-2.

Murphy, John W., Randon R. Taylor, and Marco Antonio Lueras. 2026. “A People’s AI: Beyond Participation, Toward Genuine Democratization.” Philosophy & Technology 39(2): 105. doi:10.1007/s13347-026-01116-2.

“Netflix - Overview - Top Investor Questions.” https://ir.netflix.net/ir-overview/top-investor-questions/default.aspx (May 31, 2026).

“Palantir Technologies Inc. (PLTR) Company Profile & Facts.” https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/PLTR/profile/ (May 31, 2026).

“ShipOS.” https://www.palantir.com/shipos/ (May 31, 2026).

Wieczorek, Michał. 2025. “Why AI Will Not Democratize Education: A Critical Pragmatist Perspective.” Philosophy & Technology 38(2): 53. doi:10.1007/s13347-025-00883-8.

Wieczorek, Michał. 2026. “How AI Will Monetize Education: Response to Dekker and Hermans.” Philosophy & Technology 39(2): 104. doi:10.1007/s13347-026-01115-3.