They wouldn’t have their “no one else can afford this” moat if it was all made more affordable, tho.

In a functional capitalist society (yes, those can exist, even if Marx says they’re temporary), the point would be not to provide a computing service but appliances that can perform that service. There are AI hobbyists who run open source LLM engines and retain their own dataset and bunches of LORAs. Granted it’s only terrabytes of data rather than exabytes (zettabytes? yottabytes?) and sometimes they have to let their home system brew for hours instead of minutes or seconds on a given task.

But an example of this kind of model appears in the 1970s and the invention of the personal computer, itself, before which there were only mainframes that were held by large companies (and similarly, the first PCs were hobbyist DIY kits).

I see this as a sea change driven by the same motivation that has turned large companies (who have out competed all their peers) towards enshittification. Now that we’re into the rental economy, where even software is a service rather than an appliance, the AI companies don’t want to make AI machines that they can sell, but to provide an AI service that will force their consumer base customers to keep buying and keep paying.

I don’t think that model can scale up. What we need to do is the same thing we did when we upgraded our secretaries from a typewriter and a Rolodex to a PC with an office software suite. Right now we’re seeing that even when we replace or reduce the human workforce with AI tools, the cost is greater than the original workforce (though for now, that cost is borne by the AI companies at a loss, rather than their downstream clients).

Instead we should be developing AI computer systems at the mainframe and PC level as tools to facilitate workers, which would (we hope) increase their productivity.

But again, our conglomerate corporations are trying to shore up their dominant positions in the economy, and so, as Cory Doctorow observed, are trying to do a blanket replacement of their workforce, which is failing spectacularly.

RANT: And since our ownership class and C-suite management have demonstrated they refuse to engage in commerce in good faith, seeking to replace competitive production with rent, lobbying government and financial shenanigans, the public needs to recapture government – by force as if necessary – to go back to regulating commerce and protecting workers and consumers alike. History has shown that this can create an economic environment that is fecund for benevolent innovation, e.g. better stuff for everyone.