Rent the intelligence, don't sell the data

There is a popular idea that people should get paid for their personal data. I think the version most people imagine, selling your data to whoever buys it, is the weakest one.

Raw data is cheap and getting cheaper. Publisher licensing deals price text at pennies per word at best, and personal notes are worth far less than a curated book. Synthetic data keeps pushing the price down. And most of what is in a notes app is about other people, which you have no right to sell.

Expertise is expensive. The AI labs pay human experts $50 to $125 an hour, because what they are short of is judgment, not text. A well-tended garden is better as proof of what you know than as a pile of words to sell.

So the shape I believe in:

• Prove it is yours. Sign what you write, so authorship and date can be checked.
• Choose a license per note. All rights reserved by default; Creative Commons if you want it shared; licensable for AI only if you say so.
• Get paid for the intelligence, not the file. Paid work that matches what your garden shows you know, or paid access to an assistant that answers only from your public notes.
• Bargain together. One garden is worth little to a buyer. Thousands of consenting, cleaned, signed gardens are worth a lot, and the gardeners should keep most of the money.

Never sell anything about anyone else. Everything off by default.

Related: The AI gardener, Gardens and streams.