It's Technology AND Policy decisions AND Market behavior:
"The answer isn’t an AI-specific response, it’s to promote competition, expand labor rights, including intellectual property protections for artists and engineers, protect consumers, provide financing for farming and small business, while taxing and otherwise creating friction for the movement of financial capital. That’s not just good policy because of AI, it’s good policy if you want any form of democracy!
Yet, today, American policy is organized around juicing higher returns on capital, which means policymakers focus on cutting wages, squeezing consumers, and reducing taxes on finance. This choice isn’t hidden, most of our leaders really believe that experts and financiers know how to organize America better, and much of our economic model is now based on higher asset prices. But these choices have been in place for decades, which is why we are afraid of job losses, instead of seeing the possibility of new industries and prosperity. It’s also why Americans are scared of AI; we rightly assume technology will conform to the larger politics of our society. When American policy was organized to benefit most of us, technology meant The Jetsons. Since it’s now organized to consolidate power, it’s become Black Mirror.
All of which is to say that we really should pay careful attention to generative AI. If it can cure cancer or automate driving, awesome. At the same time, companies like Meta and Anthropic, who steal en masse, should be held accountable for doing so. But in terms of policy, we have to distinguish between “AI as a technology” and generalized Wall Street-friendly choices causing the problems ascribed to AI, aka lower wages, less job stability, and people without power getting screwed."
https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/why-are-we-pretending-ai-is-going
Digital sovereignty can’t be bargained away
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