Just say no to OpenAI and Anthropic
A software engineer argues against using closed AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic, citing concerns over data privacy and corporate ethics. The author advocates for open-weight models as a more secure and transparent alternative for complex tasks.
Why it matters
It highlights growing developer skepticism toward AI centralization and the ethical implications of using proprietary, black-box AI systems.
Micah Lee Photo by Viktor Forgacs / Unsplash I recently read End Times Fascism and the Fight for the Living World by Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor. It's an excellent book and I highly recommend that everyone read it. Tech oligarchs make up an important component of the end-times-fascist coalition. One thing that stood out to me, as a software and security engineer who finds LLMs to be extremely powerful, is that the American frontier labs are run by unhinged lunatics who genuinely believe they're creating the Machine God, that they're fine with burning down the world to bring about AGI, and that they believe with religious fervor that they're the only ones smart enough to safely control it. I already kind of knew this, but this book really made it sink in.
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