[Gormo]

The mainframe model fell apart the moment that microcomputers became powerful enough to satisfy same use cases sufficiently. Centralized GenAI will also become obsolete as soon as local LLMs are capable enough to satisfy the same use cases sufficiently.

Artificial lock-in simply doesn't work in the long run: the incentive structures will always motivate customers to cut out middlemen, and peripheral markets to develop around providing the tools for doing exactly that. Anthropic and OpenAI may well end up being the Data General and Honeywell of our era.

The greatest risk to this is the possibility of political intervention creating artificial hurdles that prevents decentralized AI from challenging the big players. With than in mind, it's worthwhile to subject every proposal to regulate AI to intense scrutiny.