[andyfilms1]

It has always baffled me how quickly, and how voraciously, people started to rely on privately owned AI systems.

AI is not something discovered by scientists and plucked out of the ether. It's engineered and controlled, for profit, by corporations which have demographics and KPIs. These companies don't owe you anything, and they make no promises.

If you're running a business that deeply relies on AI, you might as well add Sam Altman to your board of directors--because he has just as much control over your company as you do. If they have a bad quarter and need to increase rates by 1000%, your choices are to pay up or shut down.

This Mythos situation is just the beginning. Not only do they have everyone hooked, but they've actively stalled the personal skill growth of millions of people who fell into vibe-coding rather than genuinely learning. And now they have that choice: Pay up, or shut down.

[cgh]

The same corporations that insist upon private Maven repositories to control all code dependencies are nevertheless fine with establishing a massive dependency on a privately-held corporation in order to write software that hardly anyone in the organization understands. When I really think about this and how it plays out in the long run, I feel like I’m taking crazy pills.

[contraposit]

I can't run my business without electricity. Yet we don't fear of its access being revoked. Sam makes the comparison of intelligence to electricity a lot. So we are on the path to these systems becoming utilities.

[anematode]

Electricity is heavily regulated. Is there any evidence that LLMs will be the same?

[signatoremo]

Was electricity regulated in the first decade of its existence?

[SoftTalker]

I don't know but likely not. Factories were powered by steam then, and had a "power plant" on site. So they didn't convert to electricity until it was reliable and guaranteed.

[altmanaltman]

Was anything regulated in those times? You could legally buy humans at that time.

But that doesn't mean we live with same standards. Lack of regulations in electricity led to a lot of deaths and disaster which is why it was regulated.

But we dont live in the start of 20th century, we live in 2026 and we must learn from the past instead of helbent on repeating it.

[andyfilms1]

I would bet any amount that when the time comes to turn AI into a utility, they will fight it tooth and nail.

[altmanaltman]

Comparing AI to electricity focusing on just one particular aspect (hey its like fuel guys!!) while completely ignoring all the structural difference between actual energy industries and big tech is really stupid.

[tim333]

They use private AI because it's hard work and expensive to provide. But you are not that locked in as xAI/OpenAI/Anthropic etc. seem pretty interchangeable for most purposes.

[p1esk]

your choices are to pay up or shut down.

Another choice is to switch to a different model, perhaps open source this time.

[andyfilms1]

Package manager incidents (like leftpad) have shown that just because it's open source doesn't mean it can't do damage to your project.

[kay_o]

Another choice is to write code and learn. Especially if you are 16 and have all day.

[p1esk]

We are talking about running a business. In business world no one ever cared where code is coming from, the only concern is how much the code costs.