The least thing you can do about ai

I am still writing the ai call lower case and call agents “clankers”. Because writing “AI” is too bold and calling clankers “agents” assumes some degree of agency. And this is simply not true. As it always was with Open Source Software (OSS) my only request to the world is to choose alternatives over proprietary. And with ai we have entered another level of proprietary dependencies and vendor-lockins. Let me elaborate.

The problem

The elephant in the room is Claude. But, I will try to not talk about Claude. Like in Harry Potter, he is the one who shall not be named. For those who do not know why C****e and BigTech is bad let me give you a brief summary:

• Everything you buy from BigTech is missing here.
• Money spent on overseas damages local infrastructure.
• Their service is not cheap, it is cheap because it is heavily subsidized.
• Remember you are not paying the real cost.
• The companies are run by oligarchs that detached from reality entirely.
• There is a moral obligation to not choose their products.

At the same time sales of services by Anthropic, OpenAI and BigTech have skyrocketed. The entire “Digital Sovereignty” movement has lead us nowhere. So much talk, so less doing.

There are few glimpse of hope: Schleswig-Holstein, OpenDesk, European Providers, … But, compared to the companies and people that are loosing their minds over a big chunk of text, I feel hopeless after all.

Do better

There are people who choose to oppose ai and are not using it at all. On an emotional level I admire them and totally agree with their sentiment. When working with in an industry that is blind to the social pressure of ai, you end up in horrible situations.

If there is button that would undo ai, I would press it. But this is not how things works. Technological progress is always the result of societal changes. We as society change and thus new technologies emerge.

On a rational level I think the best action is not to oppose, but to opt for the alternative. And that is all to say. I will not show you the alternatives to choose. The only thing I can promise, is that they are way better that the mainstream proprietary options. All you have have to do is look for alternatives.

Choose now

When we look at ai in the hype cycle we are in the perfect time to choose alternatives. The BigTech dependence has not been entwined with infrastructure (yet). We can still choose what model, what provider and what harness we want to use. That is a privilege and we must choose wisely.