AI Could Privatize Science's Shared Knowledge, Much Like England's Enclosure Movement

AI and the Enclosure of the Scientific Commons

Astrophysicist P. K. G. Williams argues that the scientific literature is an information commons, and that AI gives us the tools to enclose it for the first time. Unlike the old English common lands, which were lost to privatization between 1600 and 1800, this commons is robust and immensely valuable. Williams warns that AI-driven enclosure would convert shared knowledge into private wealth and erode the social systems sustaining it, partly through "slop spam."