It's worse than centralization. These AI models have gobbled up all the world knowledge. If for some reason the Internet dies we will have no option but to be dependent on these proprietary, for profit, AI models for any information we need.
You might say that this is impossible but look at current trends. A lot of information today is getting shared in the walled gardens of Internet. You have to login to social media to view posts. The Twitter, Reddit threads that were accessible freely now require you to log in. Similar thing is happening across other networks. People are no longer asking questions on Stackoverflow. All those queries are gonig to AI. If someone chooses to not use AI, their options will be limited in future.
Not only if the internet dies. If the country or countries managing the AI decide they don't like your country and ban you from using their (major) AI providers, in a world where most knowledge and work tanks will require access, you're screwed.
Not even talking dictatorship scenarios here. The USA might simply decide it doesn't like your country. Or maybe heavily cripple the models you can use, or censor them, for whatever reason.
I guess this is an argument for local AI. Probably not feasible for the less technically savvy.
I have high hopes for AMD Halo / NVidia Spark or sth. similar - relatively open computers (unlike Apple) with unified memory. Now if those prices just came down a bit... :-/
We currently have politicians in the U.S. talking about “stopping” AI.
So it’s plausible they’ll block me from accessing Mistral since they host DeepSeek models.
They're already censored
Yes, I know. I meant additional censorship that blocks whatever you're trying to do with them. In other words, that you are not in control.