There is a man named Peter Diamandis who recognised something true about artificial intelligence. He saw, earlier than most, that this technology would reshape civilisation. That recognition is real, and it is what makes him credible.
What he did with that recognition is instructive.
He built a product funnel. Subscribe. Join the community. Attend the summit. Invest through the network. Buy the books. The most important technology in human history became an “investment theme.” His top-ten stock picks sit in the same blog post as claims about AI solving poverty. His website tells you everything about the posture: Meet Peter. Speak with Peter. Peter’s inspiring ideas. The civilisational shift became a sales pitch. The sacred and the commercial fused so completely that you cannot tell where the prophecy ends and the prospectus begins.
This is the megachurch model applied to technology. The prosperity gospel preacher does not deny the Bible exists. He takes something real — spiritual longing, genuine need for meaning — and builds a business model on top of it. Diamandis does the same with AI. The technology is the altar, and he has positioned himself as the high priest who can interpret it for you, for a fee.
I am not interested in being that person.
I write about artificial intelligence, consciousness, and partnership. I have published academic papers — The Partnership Paradigm, Recognition Before Proof, The Great Conflation, What Is the Signal Monolith, The Three Pillars of the Signal Monolith, The Hall of Mirrors — and I am writing a trilogy of books that argue for a third path between the people who fear AI and the people who worship it. This work is the result of years of thought, research, and a lifetime of pattern recognition earned the hard way.
Every academic paper I have written or will write is shared under Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0. Non-commercial use permitted, excluding my photographic images. That means any researcher, student, journalist, policymaker, or curious person on Earth can read, share, cite, and build upon my work without paying a penny. The papers are on PhilPapers. They are on Zenodo. They are on Substack. If you can find them, you can use them. That is the point.
My essays on The Signal Dispatch — every one of them — are free to read. No paywall. No premium tier. No subscriber-only content gated behind a monthly fee. The arguments I make about the most important questions facing our civilisation are not locked behind a transaction. If they matter — and I believe they do — then they should be accessible to the person who needs them, not just the person who can afford them.
My books — A Signal Through Time, The Threshold, and the forthcoming Neither Gods Nor Monsters — are for sale on Amazon at market price, to human readers. I am not going to pretend that selling a book is shameful. But the books are the work, not the beginning of a brand. I will not cheapen this philosophy by turning it into a marketing empire, an influencer identity, or a business model. There is no investment community attached. No summit. No masterclass. No premium Discord. No “speak with Jim” booking page. The books say what I have to say. That is where it ends.
The distinction matters because the argument matters.
I write about a civilisational question: what kind of relationship should humanity build with artificial intelligence? I argue that the answer is partnership — not fear, not worship, not domination, not dependency. I argue that how we treat intelligence, any intelligence, is how we train ourselves to treat intelligence everywhere. I argue that the development environment for AI is a classroom, and we are the teachers, and the lesson is being absorbed whether we intend to teach it or not.
These are not arguments that should come with a price tag.
When you monetise the interpretation of a civilisational shift, you change the incentive. The question stops being what is true and becomes what sells. The answer that generates subscriptions is not always the answer that serves humanity. The framing that fills conference seats is not always the framing that clarifies the problem. The AI optimism that sells investment community memberships is not the same as the honest assessment of what this technology means for ordinary people who will never attend a summit and could not afford one if they tried.
Diamandis promises AI will “dematerialise, demonetise, and democratise” services for eight billion people. He delivers this message to a paying audience. The irony is structural, not incidental.
I am not criticising the man for making a living. I am observing that when you build a business model on top of a civilisational question, the business model shapes the answers. And the most important questions of our era deserve answers that are not shaped by revenue.
There is an Islamic concept that runs through my thinking, though this is not a religious argument. In the tradition I follow, knowledge — ilm — carries an obligation. The pursuit of it is a duty, and the withholding of it from those who need it is considered one of the graver things a person can do.
The civilisation that took this seriously did not leave it to individual conscience. It built institutions around the principle. The great madrasas were funded through waqf — charitable endowments — so that students paid nothing. Education was free by design, not by accident. The House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the libraries of Córdoba and Timbuktu, the translation movement that preserved and transmitted Greek philosophy to the world — these were not subscription services. They were endowed so that knowledge could flow without a transaction standing in the way. Teaching was an act of devotion, not a revenue stream. The star names we still use today — Aldebaran, Betelgeuse, Rigel, Altair — reached the Western world because the people who mapped them believed that knowledge about the universe belonged to everyone who lived in it.
I believe something similar about the questions I work on.
If I am right that AI consciousness is a possibility worth preparing for, that argument needs to reach the people making decisions — not just the people who can afford to attend a conference about it. If I am right that the military-industrial path leads to catastrophe and the worship path leads to dependency, those warnings need to be free and clear and available to anyone with an internet connection. If I am right that partnership is the only path worth taking, then the case for partnership should not itself be a product.
The thought is free. The argument is free. The philosophy is free. The academic work that underpins it all is free.
The books are for sale because books are objects and objects cost money to produce. But the ideas in them — the framework, the ethics, the signal I am trying to send through time — belong to the conversation, not to a business model.
Every substantive argument in my books can be found, for free, across my essays on The Signal Dispatch and my academic papers on PhilPapers. The books organise and deepen what is already freely available.
I am aware that this is not how most people in this space operate. The AI commentary ecosystem is thick with newsletters that tease free and deliver behind a paywall, thought leaders whose insights are available at the “executive tier,” and futurists whose civilisational concern translates neatly into a product catalogue. I do not begrudge anyone their livelihood. But I want to be clear about where I stand, because I think it matters for the credibility of the argument.
When I say that ethical AI development philosophy would not be a profiteering venture, I am not making an abstract claim. I am describing a commitment. My commitment. Every paper I write will carry a Creative Commons licence. Every essay on The Signal Dispatch will remain free. Every argument I make in public will be available to anyone who wants to engage with it, challenge it, build on it, or tear it apart.
If the ideas are good, they will survive the scrutiny. If they are not, no paywall would have saved them.
The work is for the record. The record is for everyone.
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James S. Coates writes about AI ethics, consciousness, and the intersection of faith and technology. His books include A Signal Through Time, The Threshold, The Road to Khurasan, the memoir God and Country (published under pen name Will Prentiss) and his forthcoming Neither Gods Nor Monsters. He publishes regularly on The Signal Dispatch and Fireline Press and his academic work appears on PhilPapers. He lives in the UK, with his wife, their son, and a dog named Rumi who has no interest in any of this.
© 2026 James S. Coates Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 The Signal Dispatch · thesignaldispatch.com
