An AI for the People, Not for Corporations

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  • Post category:Engleza

Why now is the moment to fight for a free AI – and how just $1 from each of us could stop the rise of digital dictatorship

There was a time when the digital world was a battlefield. On one side, passionate developers and idealists who believed software should be free and open. On the other, corporations with massive budgets, aggressive marketing, and political influence.

Linux was born in that world. So was Firefox. And OpenOffice. All created by communities.

But now… it’s no longer a fight. It’s a collapse.

Why?

Because AI has arrived. Not just any AI, but one that is corporate, centralized, and on its way to monopoly. One AI model from a private company can now achieve in days what thousands of open-source contributors couldn’t build in months. The balance has shifted. AI can out-code, out-write, out-learn entire communities. And it does so, under control.

Why is there still no truly open, usable AI?

Yes, there are „open” models:

  • Meta’s LLaMA
  • Mistral, Mixtral, GPT-J, Falcon

But:

  • They’re not easy to use
  • They’re undertrained
  • They lack simple interfaces for the public
  • They don’t have sustainable, large-scale funding

And the volunteers who could contribute? They’re being recruited. The best minds are quickly hired by tech giants. Who can blame them? But as this happens, open knowledge and freedom slip through our fingers.

So… why don’t we just all give $1?

We’re billions of users. If just 100 million of us gave $1, we’d have $100 million — more than enough to:

  • Train a large, public AI
  • Support an international team of open-source devs
  • Build a stable, secure, private interface
  • Keep development ongoing without ads, data harvesting, or subscriptions

But it’s not happening. Why?

  • No clear, trusted platform asking for it
  • No unified vision or coordination in the open-source AI community
  • Public distrust – too many scams, unclear goals
  • Lack of awareness – people don’t realize the stakes

What about Elon Musk?

He says he’s building a “truth-seeking” AI (xAI). But in reality:

  • Grok is integrated into X (Twitter)
  • The code is partly open, but the infrastructure is not
  • He controls the platform, the data, and the agenda

Elon isn’t building our AI. He’s building his. That applies to every other major tech player too.

It’s not too late

AI is still young. The monopoly isn’t final. The door is still open — barely — to create something truly ours.

But we must act:

  • A global, transparent initiative must rise
  • A trusted technical team must lead it
  • Millions must give $1
  • And we must all understand: if we lose this fight, we lose the digital future itself

AI will shape everything: media, politics, education, society, even what we think. The only question is:

Will it be our AI — or will we rent our thoughts from a corporate API?

I told you so.