Well, is it true that they give back nothing? What about the compute? Pay checks? The value of the subscription you pay for? What about actual examples of things they have given back for free, like Whisper, which used to be SOTA and is still extremely useful. Occasional excellent research papers, particularly from anthropic?

My point about "moral panic" is that it leads to statements like "giving back nothing"... which are objectively untrue. They might not reward every person that contributed to the tokens they are training on, but doing so is extremely practically difficult, and hard to do fairly, and is also probably a waste of limited resources in terms of net human progress. All these companies are doing is exactly what society has set up as the capitalist methodology to get work done: gather investors, pay people, sell products, etc... As opposed for example to the communist party deciding that the state should fund your project, or to fight for a research grant, or some other methodology, which might or might not work as well.

The only curious part about capitalism is that some individuals get a disproportionate amount of the reward for work done. At a societal level, this is essentially a soft power redistribution system, but often also leads to obnoxious individuals with supercar collections. Whether this is an overall good or bad thing for human progress is really, really hard to say for sure. However, it has a tendency to promote a lizardbrain response evolved to promote resource sharing in tribal societies, which was the best overall strategy in that setting. Or in other words, it makes people jealous.