Scourge of AI is the child of "open" internet.

From its earliest beginnings the "Internet" was openness itself. Personal blogs were the first step. Social media was the next phase. But sharing was not limited to the personal domain; shared knowledge projects like wikipedia were not only completely 'open' they also relied on collective volunteer work. Many of these projects were in time took over by foundations which had paid employees but the overwhelming portion of the work was unpaid.

Open knowledge was tightly integrated to open code. People dedicated their time and talent to projects which had no substantial benefit to themselves other than pride and a small notoriety. The fate and essence of open source was finally revealed when microsoft, traditional enemy of the open source movement acquired github. Recently, linux foundation banned all russian internationals from contributing to kernel development, to comply with u.s. sanctions.

Generative models known colloquially as "AI" was trained on the open internet. These models consumed the knowledge, data and code people built, published and forgotten over the years. you are what you eat, and this applies to generative models too. these models are both the sum total and the average of the data they were trained on. AI is the reification of the open internet. Now the past "openness" of the web is revealed as just a stage in the hegemony of capital. Openness as a virtue has disappeared but it has solidified in the form of digital capital which will expel most of the "knowledge workers" from their supposedly privileged seats.