Proprietary AI is what Sun Micro is to the internet; irrelevant. If you don't know; proprietary internet was a thing but Open Source killed it. Offline Open Source AI exists now. AI is the framework not the product. Open Source is the only future because Open Source is ownership. Ownership is Citizenship. Proprietary is ownership of a part of your person; slavery. Neo Digital Feudalism is for imbeciles.
I think people would be surprised at how little hard drive space some models take up when you compare it to what they can produce. You can store LLMs on your phone. Cat's out of the bag.
And despite any restrictions we try to make, there will be a company with great GPUs or TPUs that will be able to fine tune giant models without anyone knowing.
Agreed. the generative AI genie is out of the bottle, for better or worse, and there is no putting in back in. I understand a lot of the concerns people have around the technology, and I share a lot of them, but I don't see what bans and boycotts on a political or cultural level are going to solve.
Even if some countries were to ban or heavily restrict AI tech, others will not. The tech is becoming if not already portable enough to be surreptitiously used even if prohibited. Technological shifts tend to be inevitable and unavoidable, even when it they are very disruptive. There was no stopping the industrial revolution, the automobile, or the internet, and if there is enough real utility in it the same can be said for AI.
Trying to stifle AI will only cause it to develop in the shadows, which I think will only lead to worse outcomes if people become ignorant to to the technologies real capabilities and applications.
Even if some countries were to ban or heavily restrict AI tech, others will not.
Also, I'm convinced any country that heavily restricts its use will just be using their own at a federal level. All this untagged data that's collected from us through surveillance is pretty valuable. If AI could help a government find a serial killer would they use it? If AI could help a government positively identify a revolution would they use it?