The dual reality of AI’s advance!

The dual reality of AI’s advance! The AI inflection point and the financialization of intellectual property.

An analysis of emerging AI trends through the lens of New Internet Media’s principles

Navigating the “gentle singularity”

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has declared that the acceleration toward superintelligent AI has begun, describing it as having “passed the event horizon.” This new era promises AI systems that enhance human productivity, derive novel scientific insights, and eventually make intelligence and energy abundantly accessible. Projections from major technology firms reinforce this view, anticipating trillions of dollars in revenue from generative AI within the next decade.

This projected boom, however, is built on a foundation of existing human creativity and knowledge, much of it copyrighted. While the technological trajectory points toward a future of unprecedented scale and automation, the legal and economic frameworks governing intellectual property remain rooted in a pre-AI era. The current model positions copyright holders as providers of raw material for a new industrial machine, often without attribution or compensation.

This article analyzes the divergent views on AI’s progress and argues that the only sustainable path forward for creators is a fundamental reclassification of copyright itself.

As NIM’s founder, Thor Pettersen, stated, “Sometimes the best way to change the game isn’t to play it better, it’s to own the playing field.”

This requires shifting the paradigm from reactive legal disputes to proactive financial governance, transforming copyrights into a recognized and enforceable financial asset class.

The dual reality of AI’s advance

The promise of abundance and the peril of commoditization

Altman’s vision of AI performing cognitive work, writing code, and executing complex physical tasks by the late 2020s suggests a world where the cost of intelligence declines significantly. While this promises to democratize powerful tools, it poses a direct threat to the perceived value of human-created content. If AI can generate music, text, and images on demand, the market risks being flooded with derivative works, commoditizing creative output, and marginalizing human creators. In this scenario, the AI model becomes the celebrated tool, while the vast library of human works that trained it becomes an invisible, uncompensated resource.

The illusion of thinking and the reality of derivation

In contrast to Altman’s optimism, recent research from Apple highlights a “complete accuracy collapse” in large reasoning models when faced with complex problems. This suggests that the path to true artificial general intelligence (AGI) is more challenging than presumed.

However, this limitation does not diminish the technology’s disruptive power; rather, it clarifies its fundamental nature. Current AI is not a creator of novel thought but a sophisticated, large-scale derivative engine. It excels at synthesizing, remixing, and restructuring the data it was trained on.

This “illusion of thinking” reinforces the indispensable role of the original works that form its knowledge base. The system’s failures when pushed beyond its training demonstrate its ultimate dependence on human-generated intellectual property. The value it creates is inextricably linked to the value of the underlying content, making the need for attribution and compensation more critical than ever.

Reclassifying copyright from a legal right to a financial asset…

The failure of “fair use” in a trillion-dollar market

The doctrine of “fair use” was not designed to regulate an industry projected to generate trillions in revenue from the unauthorized use of copyrighted materials. When a company’s financial disclosures project billions in revenue from AI services trained on protected content, the argument that such use is non-commercial or for research purposes becomes untenable. The current legal framework reveals a massive gap in financial attribution, treating a core business input as a free externality. Continuing to rely on reactive, case-by-case litigation is an inefficient and inadequate response to a systemic economic challenge.

Copyright as a regulated asset class

The principles of New Internet Media (NIM) and its Copyrighted-as-a-Service (CaaS) platform propose a structural solution:

Reclassify copyrights as a financial asset class, subject to the same standards of accountability as securities or other regulated instruments.

Under this model, intellectual property rights are designed to require transparent sourcing, authorized licensing, and fair compensation.

• Unauthorized Use as Financial Misconduct: Using unlicensed copyrighted works to train a commercial AI would no longer be a mere legal tort but would be treated as a form of financial misconduct akin to producing counterfeit goods.
• Copyright Laundering: The act of passing off AI-generated outputs derived from unauthorized inputs as original work would be analogous to money laundering — bypassing origin attribution to create cleansed, untraceable value.

This re-framing shifts the conversation from legal ambiguity to financial compliance, creating a market where intellectual property is treated as a traceable, enforceable, and yield-generating asset.

The NIM and CaaS solution, Building the new playing field

An infrastructure for financialized copyright

NIM’s Copyrighted-as-a-Service model provides the tangible infrastructure to make this reclassification a reality. It moves beyond theoretical arguments and litigation to build the financial and technological rails for a new creative economy.

This is achieved through a suite of purpose-built tools:

• CopyrightChains: Leveraging distributed ledger technology, this system creates an immutable record of ownership, provenance, and licensing history for creative works.
• Tokenized Royalties: Copyrights can be represented by tokens that facilitate fractional ownership, automated royalty flows, and transparent, real-time compensation. Smart contracts embed licensing rules and payment distribution directly into the code.
• Decentralized Governance: Inspired by DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) models, NIM empowers the community of rights holders to establish licensing terms and govern the ecosystem collaboratively, ensuring the rules are set by those who create the value.

A self-governing economic ecosystem

This infrastructure is powered by a multi-token system designed to create a self-sustaining and compliant marketplace.

· Royalty Tokens (ROY) are used to license content, ensuring that creators are paid directly and transparently for the use of their work.

· NIM Utility Tokens (NUT) are used to access platform services, such as content registration and trading. Rights holders receive these tokens as part of their participation, giving them the tools to manage and monetize their assets within the ecosystem.

· CREATIVES functions as a general currency within the ecosystem, anchored to the intrinsic value of the content it represents.

This model creates a closed-loop system where AI developers and other users must operate within a framework of clear rules and fair exchange. Compliance is not an afterthought but a prerequisite for participation.

Owning the future of creativity

The discourse surrounding AI, whether optimistic or cautious, leads to an unavoidable conclusion: the economic and creative landscapes are being permanently altered. In this new reality, the value of authenticated, human-created intellectual property will not diminish; instead, it will become the foundational asset class of the digital age.

Relying on outdated legal frameworks is a strategy for managed decline. The NIM and CaaS model offers a proactive alternative. Building a new financial market designed specifically for intellectual property equips creators to transition from being raw material to being the primary economic beneficiaries of the AI revolution.

This approach ensures that as intelligence becomes abundant, the value of human creativity is not only protected but elevated, fostering a fair, transparent, and sustainable future for creators and innovators alike.