I find it far more ironic that they are called Reclaim the Internet.
I am dating myself, but I remember the Internet. It’s rather ironic too that the actual Internet, literal and figuratively free internet, was always doomed from the start, just like AI is effectively doomed in terms of it being some kind of productivity tool or amazing thing you can use to build your own thing, because the logical conclusion is very bad for most people, including the technorati types here that think themselves above it and immune.
If you’re shocked and surprised by the way there Internet was maneuvered into the surveillance prison Flock made itself the poster child of at the hands of Mr Langley, take that trajectory and lay it over AI, but only at exponential rates. You don’t have to believe me, it won’t matter either way, it’s happening, short of the Soviet style implosion of the “American” empire.
Maybe once the planet has been made uninhabitable to biological life there will be an AI robot cybernetic splinter group trying to “reclaim humanity”.
You can't host the internet on your machine, or download a "Google" or "Meta" but you can download a local model. So I don't think AI will lead to more centralization. Besides local models, the interface itself - prompt based steering - is eminently more open ended that apps or websites ever were. Cloud or local, you get more control now as a user.
I love the way people romanticise this hippie utopian idea of “The Internet” like it wasn’t originally built by, and for, the US Military
In a zoo humanity lays protected. These beings used to roam earth as the apex predators and destroyers of their ecosystem and their species too.
How would a soviet style implosion of the US work in real life? A civil war is far more likely and we already have historical precedence for that.
And your AI robot cybernetic splinter group thing sounds a lot like the biblical story of Noah than anything that's based on science or you know facts.
Maybe not from the start, but definitely since the EU sunk its teeth into it. We can look forward to ID-controls for everything online, and monitoring of what we write. Should anyone deviate from the EU leftist narrative they will be fined, disconnected, imprisoned or all three.
The result is of course that the internet will split in two. The day-job internet, centered on earning money, and not on expressing thoughts. Then we have the darknet where ideas can be discussed freely, without the government monitoring you. Sadly this internet will never be accessible to the common man, who in time, will be taught never to discuss politics and ideas in public. We will get the kitchen table culture of the soviet union, all thanks to the EU now building out a massive surveillance machine with ID-verification, and chat control (which will eventually pass, be it under that name, or any other).
At least we now know that the EU and China are closer in terms of ideology and control than we first thought. It is sad, but such is life.