> There's plenty to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but one thing it's not, is "robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up".

There's a way that many people fear this is true: what you're getting for "free" has some external cost that you aren't taking into account.

Cost 1. The environment. Tech companies were once significantly interested in efficiency, their carbon footprint, etc. With the advent of LLMs, this was thrown out the window. Concerned people are now thinking about water footprint, heat footprint, noise footprint, and probably more. These things are hard to put a dollar figure on in a short comment, but the sustanability of a liveable climate for the billions living on this planet is literally priceless.

Cost 2. Employment. We face a significant cull of employability -- graphic artists, programmers, mathematicians, paralegals, and more are rightly fearful for the end of their career. If we're getting intelligence for "free" in 2026 dollars, but we can't get jobs in 2030, will all that content still be affordable in 2035?

Cost 3. Infinite investor dollars. The AI companies are burning cash at a historically unprecedented rate. This has attracted a lot of attention from traditional investors, like pensions, banks, etc. If all of this ends up in a free product, that doesn't sound like it'll return those investments. And that can crash the economy -- I ask again about real affordability in 2035.

Item 2 is the big one. Because not only is AI about to destroy jobs wholesale; it's doing so in an environment that abhors wealth and income redistribution that could blunt the harms.

> Infinite investor dollars

This has another side effect in that it breaks the power that consumers have in the market to have a say in how resources get allocated, by voting with their wallet.

The entire AI buildout is non-consensual. Individuals have zero say. We could all refuse to buy AI subscriptions and it would not matter because businesses will still buy, and, investors have decided that we are moving forward with this no matter what, seemingly whether anyone is actually buying or not.

AI isn't necessarily unique here, but it is one of the biggest new examples of wealth inequality and how society at large are no longer the ones who get to decide how resources are allocated under a capitalist system, especially when the investor dollars behind it amounts to the GDP of a small nation.

> the sustanability of a liveable climate

And this is fuel for climate change denial. See? Are the wealthy and powerful people acting like they are concerned about the climate? No. They are doubling down on energy use and consumption. It's all a fraud!