I for one embrace offline open source LLMs. IMO anyone using proprietary AI is a fool. Sure it may be a little better and easier to get started with, but I have never used it and never will. I can do stuff I never thought possible before. I can’t wait for the improvements that keep coming. If someone is only bright enough to use Windows, how can I fault them. Likewise with AI. If you want to whore absolutely every detail about yourself to these stalkerware companies that is your call. It is about ownership, and that is the real conversation we should all be having. A citizen at the very core is a person with a right to ownership. Proprietary is theft of ownership. Your personal data is a physical part of your person. Collecting and selling that data to attempt to manipulate you is an act of selling part of your person for exploitation. This has world changing long term implications that people are far too stupid to see. This is the turning point for a new age of feudalism. The AI is just a technology that can be used in many ways. It is not the problem. The theft of ownership and enslavement of your digital self is the key issue of our age. This is the end of citizenship and the beginning of the digital dark ages. It will set us back by hundreds of years of progress just like the last dark age when citizens became serfs because of greedy powerful feudal lords. In the next hundreds of years, people will only remember us as the peoples who willingly gave up their right to citizenship and ownership for free e-mail and searches on the internet that followed in a corruption cascade until “they owned nothing and they were happy about it” … until they learned what they really lost and could never get back until millions died to earn it once again.