Ownership After AI

Matthew B. Crawford on what might be coming

In an essay published in December 2025, Matthew B. Crawford explores the economic, political, and social consequences of AI. Along with the internet of things, AI is about to change what ownership means, raise challenges to the managerial expert class that has dominated business and government for the past eighty years, and shuffle the role of universities in our society. What’s at stake, Crawford argues, is “ownership of the means of thinking.”

We’ve all become dependent on the cloud’s infrastructure. Without it, businesses shut down. When it’s functioning, the internet is so firmed embedded in our lives that it effectively removes ownership from owners. Volkswagen and Mercedes plan to establish tiers for the performance of their EVs: If you want the highest-performing models, you must not only buy the car but pay a monthly subscription. BMW plans to charge subscription rates for heated seats.

Ownership blurs into rent: “The very concept of ownership becomes clouded under a subscription model, in which the things we depend on become sites of continuing wealth-extraction.” We’re all renters now, which means “the function of almost everything, or the availability of any service, can be made contingent on the provider and the customer keeping a good relationship.” If AI follows the same model, we’ll have to rent the tools for thinking.