Centralized AI Threatens A Democratic Digital Future

Authored by Manouk Termaaten (founder and CEO of Vertical Studio AI) via CoinTelegraph.com,

Major corporations control decentralized AI (DeAI) companies, leaving decentralized AI in the dust. To build a more decentralized world, the sector must actively execute upon a focused DeAI strategy, with shared standards between projects, without compromise.

In April, a UN report warned that AI’s $4.8-trillion market is dominated by a mere 100 companies, most of which are based in the US and China. Centralized AI incumbents have the money and the connections to control this massive new industry, which means significant implications for society. 

These companies, all employing centralized AI technology, have run into their fair share of headaches. For example, Microsoft’s Copilot garnered attention for creating explicit, inappropriate images, such as children in compromising scenarios. This sparked a public and regulatory backlash.

Although Microsoft created stricter moderation, it had already demonstrated that centralized AI can harbor problems in part due to its closed-source code. 

Citadel was wrapped up in an AI trading scandal in the financial sector, as algorithms allegedly manipulated stock prices via artificial volume creation.

Google’s Project Maven, a Pentagon pilot program used in military tech, has raised ethical questions.

“We believe that Google should not be in the business of war,” reads a letter penned by Google employees and addressed to Sundar Pichai, the company’s CEO. The employees requested that Google leave Project Maven.

“We ask that Project Maven be cancelled, and that Google draft, publicize and enforce a clear policy stating that neither Google nor its contractors will ever build warfare technology,” the letter states.

So much for “Don’t be evil” — the company’s old slogan.

These situations give us clear examples of the potential failures of centralized AI, including ethical lapses, opaque decision-making and monopolistic control. DeAI’s open-source ethos, community governance, audit trails and computer facilities can give more than a few massive corporations an edge in the future of AI. 

Centralized AI gains more power 

Corporations and nation-states maintain an upper hand in AI development today — not DeAI projects. Nation-states and corporations can and do outspend DeAI.

Nation-states see that the stakes are high, as Russian President Vladimir Putin highlighted when he warned that the country that wins the AI race will “become the ruler of the world.” The People’s Republic of China aims to become the global leader in AI by 2030. 

AI will likely develop an authoritarian bent and feature the pervasive lack of privacy proliferating across today’s World Wide Web, all defined by a corporate state that maintains only a veneer of sharing the fundamental values of the Enlightenment.

DeAI faces an uphill battle

The chances for DeAI to carve out a considerable market share are relatively small. The incumbents are so well-resourced that the battle is one of David and Goliath. Nation-states and corporations will maintain the lead on access to AI, making it all but guaranteed that most of the world will interface with AI first on centralized systems, giving them early adopter status. 

But on a long enough timeline — decades or hundreds of years — DeAI can win market share via open-sourced models and transparent developer documentation.

To realize the vision of DeAI, the sector will have to maximize AI’s benefits with security. DeAI must execute on privacy and data control, resilience, scalability, reduced latency, access democratization and cost-efficiency. It must do this as a community and express its values to the world — regulators, consumers, investors and more. 

DeAI brings numerous advantages over centralized AI systems, like improved privacy and data control, no single point of failure, edge computing and democratized access.

Despite these advantages, AI will undoubtedly be dominated by the prominent state-enterprise apparatus characteristic of the neoliberal world. 

To create a more decentralized world, it’s time to proactively implement a clear DeAI strategy and establish common standards across projects, ensuring these are upheld without compromise.