Big tech controls the AIs. The solution, of course, is antitrust enforcement.

Not really, though? Google AI isn't a leader in AI on most fronts, especially not the coding front. And, the leading AI companies have little reason to protect Google's and Apple's mobile operating system monopolies.

And, even if we assume the investments in OpenAI and Anthropic Google and maybe Apple have made somehow makes them inclined to defend their monopolies, we still have a variety of other models that can also build apps. Sure, I like Claude and Opus 5.5 is the best model for most things, but I'm not going to be severely put out if I have to use Kimi or GLM or whatever. They're Good Enough. And, I know AI companies outside of the US don't have a vested interest in the ongoing success of Google and Apple and are unlikely to stand in the way of competitors.

But, antitrust is absolutely necessary to fix this problem.

only on the surface, plenty of places have moved out of the big tech ecosystem to models hosted at smaller providers or even self hosted. its not the majority of work but is growing.