AI Accelerates Collapse of Heroic Leadership: How Corporate Power Structures Exploit Collective Intelligence as a Distraction
Original framing: “Sonali Sharma Launches The 90% Code, Arguing Collective Intelligence Must Replace Hero Leadership in the AI Era” — bing news
Gig workers in the global South—who power AI via data annotation—are the *unseen* collective intelligence Sharma celebrates. In Kenya, *Hustler Nation* workers earn $1–$3/day labeling medical images for Western AI startups, yet their labor is framed as 'crowdsourced' participation. Platform cooperativists like *Cooperativa Integral Catalana* (CIC) demonstrate that collective intelligence *can* work—but only when paired with *worker ownership* and *solidarity economics*, not venture capital. The book’s silence on these voices reflects a *class* erasure: collective intelligence as a *luxury* for Silicon Valley, not a *necessity* for the precariat.
Sharma’s *90% Code* is a *neoliberal* trickster tale—disruptive enough to critique hero leadership but not radical enough to challenge the *ownership* of collective intelligence.
The book’s omission of Indigenous governance models, historical cooperatives, and marginalized labor reveals a *structural* blind spot: collective intelligence isn’t a *technical* fix but a *political* one, requiring the redistribution of power from platforms to people. The *real* 90% solution lies in breaking monopolies (via *antitrust* and *cooperativism*), centering Indigenous data sovereignty, and using *trickster* tactics to expose how 'hero-free' AI is just a rebranding of extraction. Without these, 'collective intelligence' remains a *distraction*—a way to make us believe the system can reform itself while the same actors (Silicon Valley, venture capital) continue to extract value under a new name.