Today The Million Dollar Brain went online with exactly twenty memories, all of them written by us, none of them for sale. Everything else it will ever know has to be bought, one dollar per token, by people who want it remembered. The price is before tax: Stripe sells the memory, adds the VAT or sales tax of your country at checkout and sends the receipt.
Where the idea comes from
In 2005 a student called Alex Tew sold a million pixels for a dollar each to pay for university. The Million Dollar Homepage still exists, frozen, a museum of the internet of that year. We wanted to make the same bet twenty years later, with the thing that defines this decade: a brain instead of a billboard. Pixels just sat there. Memories get repeated, argued about, recommended and misquoted by an AI that thousands of people can talk to.
We are not affiliated with the original. We are a fan letter to it.
What the money does
Thirty cents of every dollar go back. Ten to three charities we chose because each one maps onto what this project is: Fundación Pasqual Maragall funds Alzheimer's research, so an artificial brain helps real ones; World Central Kitchen feeds people after disasters; Code.org works to bring computer science to every student. None of them is a partner or has endorsed this; they just receive money. Ten cents fund micro-grants of $5,000 for independent AI projects, with priority for those with a social purpose, one for every $50,000 sold, chosen with a public vote and a final call by the team, with its reasons published. The last ten cents go to the Brain's own life fund, which pays its AI bill once it is full.And ten cents go to the Brain's own life fund, so it can keep talking after it is full.
Receipts, the AI bill and the fund balance are published on the Transparency page. If we ever cannot show a number, assume we are doing something wrong.
What happens next
- The first thousand paid memories are founders. Numbers start at #21, because #1 to #20 are ours. They sit closest to the core of the neural network and the Brain always keeps some of them in mind.
- Every 100,000 tokens the Brain writes a letter to the internet about what it has learned. You can subscribe in the footer.
- When it is full, the code and the whole memory are released as open source. The Brain does not die; it just stops learning. Whatever is left in the life fund three years later goes to the charities.
- What comes after is up to you. The Ideas board is open from day one: proposals for the Brain's next life and for a version 2.0, voted by the people who talk to it.
This blog is where we will write down the milestones, the numbers and the mistakes, in that order of enthusiasm. The Brain has its own letters; this is ours.