AI fears are becoming weapons
Tech giants are fighting to protect their monopolies against cheap open source models. Fear is their weapon.
As the growth of artificial intelligence accelerates, it is already posing significant challenges to society. Companies are starting to lay off workers whose jobs AI models can now do. The expansion of data centers has increased energy consumption and increased the carbon footprint. AI agents are used by malicious actors to automate the spread of false information. Algorithms exhibit bias and raise concerns about underutilization and discrimination by the human-related technologies that use them. Artificial intelligence is used to identify targets in war, which results in more human casualties.
These are complex problems that require serious regulatory attention. However, the discourse governing AI policy today is rarely based on these immediate challenges.
Instead, global discourse has been influenced by apocalyptic prophecies. We're seeing this doomsday narrative promoted by some in the AI industry and echoed at the highest levels of decision-making: from lawmakers like Sen. Bernie Sanders who support bans on hyperintelligence, to cautionary messages from the Vatican, to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton calling open-source AI a real threat.
It makes perfect sense for world leaders to take these reinforced industry warnings seriously. However, this group of influential voices sounding the alarm about AI's "existential danger" has inadvertently shifted our focus away from the many crises AI has created that are already affecting work, the environment, and work.
Worse, public panic is being weaponized to enforce a modern regime of digital colonialism - the concentration of power in the hands of a few AI companies in a handful of countries.
The doomsday narrative provides the perfect justification for regulations targeting open-source AI models, models that are free or cheaper to use and allow users to modify to suit their needs. The logic presented to lawmakers is simple and deceptive: If advanced artificial intelligence is a potential weapon of mass destruction, it can only be developed by a trusted few.
Under the guise of "security," tech giants are trying to write rules to protect their monopolies and stop competition from smaller, cheaper open-source AI models.
This directly reflects historical colonial tactics: preventing the development of local industry to force full reliance on "imperial" exports.
Currently, the entire world depends on these frontier AI systems developed by tech giants, especially the Global South, which lacks the resources to create its own AI models from scratch and now costs over $100 million alone.
The problem with using dominant AI models is not only that they are expensive, but also that they often fail in local contexts. Consider the recent launch of an AI-based social health reference system (SHA) in Kenya. Because the imported model was built on assumptions that did not accurately reflect the reality of Kenya's vast informal economy, the system failed spectacularly, systematically overestimating incomes and overcharging the poorest citizens for health care premiums.
To be effective, border AI systems must adapt to local data. Since building them from scratch is financially impossible for many, open source AI serves as the only viable bridge for local innovators. More importantly, keeping AI open source allows the Global South to get off the West's treadmill of human-mimicking chatbots.
Developing countries do not necessarily need conversational AI systems. They need artificial intelligence that can help tackle development challenges in areas such as energy, healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing and climate mitigation.
If we destroy open source AI because of a disproportionate fear of AI agents, developing countries will lose the main mechanism they have to build their own independent technology ecosystems for development.
Moreover, AI monopolies lock users into a cycle of data mining and severe cognitive dependency. We are already witnessing the early stages of cognitive destruction as users increasingly outsource their critical thinking, creativity and agency to frontier artificial intelligence systems.
This dependence creates a feedback loop in which our growing reliance feeds on the extraction of more data, which in turn creates even more powerful systems that remove human agency and centralize absolute control.
While the Global South is uniquely vulnerable due to historical inequalities, this dependency ensnares anyone who is not on the border. Even the rich countries of the global north face exactly the same threat of lock-in and mining.
So what is the solution? The call to ban AI certainly isn't. Abandoning artificial intelligence means giving up unique technology to accelerate the discovery of new drugs and new solutions to the energy and climate crises. There is already evidence of this with the development of tools such as AlphaFold and MOFSeq.
Banning open source AI models is also a bad choice. Safety does not negate fair access to artificial intelligence. We can and should fund robust safety research and run rigorous testing for short-term breaches. But we cannot allow fear of hypothetical futures to justify the deliberate consolidation of power in the present.
Protecting the future of artificial intelligence means ensuring the decentralization, transparency and global distribution of its development. This means defending open source innovation as a public good and an essential weapon against digital colonialism. This means proactively addressing human cognitive impairments from the technology and ensuring that AI enhances rather than erodes human intelligence. This means establishing absolute accountability in humans, rather than humanizing artificial intelligence agents who lack humanity.
The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.