[krapp]

Yes. Capital wants people to make paid, centralized LLM services the core of their business and identity. Capital wants to monetize and control every aspect of human existence, thought and expression, and people are throwing themselves into the torment nexus en masse with enthusiasm. It doesn't actually matter how well AI works, what it improves or doesn't, or how badly they fail. AI must be unavoidable and inevitable, integrated into our lives so deeply and thoroughly that we don't notice it the way we don't notice the air we breathe.

The world's economies are already propped up by AI to a degree that makes it too big to fail at a scale that dwarfs banks during 2008. AI is the single Jenga block keeping our entire technological civilization from tumbling into the abyss. Governments are using AI to shape policy. Militaries are using AI to kill people. AI is writing law, writing science, generating culture, shaping human perception, shaping human communication, replacing human connection. AI is literally god for some people. It gives the illusion of liberation but is really just a means of control, and it's a means of control that if you hate you can't avoid, and that otherwise you can't resist.

And barring some insane technological leaps it requires massive infrastructure, compute and proprietary resources to be useful, for most definitions of useful (see tfa.) If you think you'll ever be allowed to compete or truly be a threat to entrenched capitalist interests using "free" and "open source" models, you're delusional. You'll pay for everything and you'll own nothing. And sure, sometimes someone's toaster will talk them into sharing a bath but that's just the price we have to pay for living in the future.

Yeah, AI seems to serve the interests of capital better than anything, ever, really. If AI is god, then that god's name is Mammon.

[wartywhoa23]

Brilliant summary!

> If AI is god, then that god's name is Mammon.

Or Moloch.

[pixl97]

More people need to know about the Moloch problem to understand why so many things suck.

[matheusmoreira]

> If you think you'll ever be allowed to compete or truly be a threat to entrenched capitalist interests using "free" and "open source" models, you're delusional. You'll pay for everything and you'll own nothing.

Maybe. I refuse to give up though. I will continue struggling to own my computers and my systems to the very end.

  You will soon have your God,
  and you will make it
  with your own hands.

      -- Morpheus
         Deus Ex