AI as a liberation from corporate reign?

Consumers Are Screwed

The modern supplier-customer relationship is broken. It’s broken in the sense that most consumers aren’t satisfied with their purchases. Most products we see in stores or online are borderline useless or far too expensive.

It’s the equivalent of having to eat out during your lunch break while all your options are gas-station food. The food is overpriced, and the quality is always terrible, but people buy it because there is no other choice. To me, that’s what it feels like when you’re shopping for TVs, tech, clothes, or basically any other product that defines the modern era.

This practice of overlooking the customer and focusing merely on money is predatory. It’s what capitalism tends toward, ultimately creating monopolies. It’s the reason why the CEOs of McDonald’s and Taco Bell seem never to eat there. They know how bad the food is.

The Resistance

As the saying goes, “Wherever there is a will, there is a way.”

I’d like to note that I’m neither the first nor will be the last person to notice this problem. There are so many people who are fed up with how corporations treat them that they are constantly looking for alternatives. When no alternatives seem to meet their needs, they create their own solutions given the opportunity.

I tend to think about Linux when I think about build over buy.

I think about how corporations have screwed their customers so badly that they ended up screwing each other over as well. I think about how poor operating systems generally are, and how the one most corporations use to deliver results ends up being the one consumers created for themselves and made available for free.

The crowdsourced model is thriving. I see it everywhere, more and more. It reminds me of a conversation I once had with my girlfriend about an ultracapitalist society. She asked me, “If we are currently living in what some people describe as late-stage capitalism, what do you think happens after it? My reply? We go back. It’s that simple.

When we go too far in one direction and realize that it isn’t working, we slowly retrace our steps. We are moving away from an ultracapitalist state and toward other economic policies, where money in the hands of the free market alone were not enough.

The Curve

Not to sound cocky, but as an engineer and tech enthusiast, I believe I see trends in the consumer space more quickly than most people. To this day, I am astounded to see how people deeper in the industry are often ahead of everyone else.

Was crypto created for the love of the game, or did its creators really envision the global impact of this emerging technology and its potential to threaten governmental power?

I believe that with these new AI trends leaning toward building and creating things with chatbots, eventually everyone will be making their own tools, games, and products. The only problem will be our dependence on AI itself. If history repeats itself, those suffering from poor product delivery will be the people using the software to create their own tools and products.

Liberation

To free ourselves from corporate oversight and dependence on corporate tools, we have to understand the current landscape. We have to play the game in the most creative ways. Only those who test the limits of the rules can fully understand the people who made them.

This is why my approach to this newfound era is to participate in the AI revolution: to build our own products and tools as a means of understanding and participating in this new game.