# Ashutosh Desai: On the Shoulders of Capitalism | Intelligence at the Frontier 2026

- Channel: [Funding the Commons](https://streameth.org/funding_the_commons)
- Date: 2026-05-09
- Duration: 13:27
- Topics: Ashutosh Desai, Make School, Google Magenta, capitalism and AI, colonialism AI, AI and labor, AI and power, military industrial complex AI, AI economics 2026, prisoner's dilemma AI, AI shaper not user, latent space creativity, AI and history, Intelligence at the Frontier, Funding the Commons, tech for good, AI governance 2026, AI and society, post capitalism, AI inequality
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-hbryGfM23Ys
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbryGfM23Ys

## Description

In 1770, the British East India Company's pursuit of profit contributed to a famine that killed 10 million people. Ashutosh Desai starts there, and draws a straight line to today.

Ashutosh, founder of Make School and collaborator on Google's Magenta music AI project, argues that technological advantage has always allowed capital to out-leverage both labor and governance. The Industrial Revolution reshaped the bodies of Indian weavers. AI is doing something similar now to software engineers and knowledge workers. His warning: the American military-industrial complex combined with AI is the greatest risk we face, and many of the people enabling it are rational actors who simply can't find their way out of the prisoner's dilemma.

His invitation is to stop being a user of these technologies and become an active shaper of them.

Speaker: Ashutosh Desai

This session was part of Intelligence at the Frontier, held March 14–15, 2026, at Frontier Tower in San Francisco.

Learn more at https://www.fundingthecommons.io