"While projects like Te Hiku are no doubt valuable, by definition they cannot be scaled-up alternatives to the collective power of American AI capital, which commands resources far greater than many of the world’s states. If it becomes normal for AI tools like ChatGPT to be governed by and for Silicon Valley, we risk seeing the primary means of content production concentrated in the hands of a tiny number of tech barons.
We therefore need to put big solutions on the table. Firstly, regulation: there must be a set of rules that place strict limits on where AI companies get their data from, how their models are trained, and how their algorithms are managed. In addition, all AI systems should be forced to operate within tightly regulated environmental limits: energy usage for generative AI cannot be a free-for-all on a planet under immense ecological stress. AI-powered automated weapons systems should be prohibited. All of this should be subject to stringent, independent audits to ensure compliance.
Secondly, although the concentration of market power in the AI industry took a blow from DeepSeek’s arrival, there remain strong tendencies within AI — and indeed in digital tech as a whole — towards monopolization. Breaking up the tech oligarchy would mean eliminating gatekeepers that concentrate power and control data flows.
Finally, the question of ownership should be a serious part of the debate. Te Hiku shows that when AI tools are built by organizations with entirely different incentive structures in place, they can produce wildly different results. As long as artificial intelligence is designed for the purposes of the competitive accumulation of capital, firms will continue to find ways to exploit labor, degrade the environment, take short cuts in data extraction, and compromise on safety, because if they don’t, one of their competitors will."
https://jacobin.com/2025/07/altman-openai-artificial-intelligence-labor-environment-deepseek