What I'm slightly worried about is that eventually they are going to want to monetize LLMs more and more, and it's not going to be good, because they have the ability to steer the conversation towards trying to get you to buy stuff.
Not only can you run reasonably intelligent models on recent relatively powerful PC's "for free", but advances are undoubtedly coming that will increase the efficient use of memory and CPU in these things- this is all still early-days
Also, some of those models are "uncensored"
As per dead internet theory, how confident are we that the community which tells us which LLM is safe or unsafe is itself made of real people, and not mostly astroturfing by the owners of LLMs which are biased to promote things for money?
Even DIY testing isn't necessarily enough, deceptive alignment has been shown to be possible as a proof-of-concept for research purposes, and one example of this is date-based: show "good" behaviour before some date, perform some other behaviour after that date.
I'm not sure what the situation is currently, but I can easily see private data and private resources leading to much better AI tools, which can not be matched by open source solutions.
So I agree that open source solutions will likely lag behind, but that's fine. Gemini 2.5 wasn't unusable when Gemini 3 didn't exist, etc.
Government should not be in a position to directly and pervasively shape people’s understanding of the world.
That would be the infinite regress opposite of a free (in a completely different sense) press.
A non-profit providing an open data and training regime for an open WikiBrain would be nice. With standard pricing for scaled up use.
You disagree with national curricula, state broadcasters, publicly funded research and public information campaigns?
Most of us used to see it as isolated to religion or niche political points, but increasingly everything os being swept into the "its political" camp.
Do you prefer the previous narratives? The latter? Or whatever you are told?
And that is the risk of relatively static information.
What if your information source was interactive, adaptive and motivated? And could record and report on your interactions and viewpoints?
How would a non profit even be funded? That would just be government with extra steps.
No, capitalism giveth the LLMs and capitlism taketh the sales.
For answers, just re-read my comment. Or, this:
1) Avoiding centralization is exactly why government shouldn’t do this.
2) Why did you raise a false dichotomy of government vs. commercial centralization?
I proposed an open solution, which is non-commercial with decentralized control.
3) Funding?: Have you heard of Wikipedia?
People often donate to prominent tools they use.
And, as I pointed out, there is an even more reliable source.
The necessity for scaled automated access creates an inevitable need for uniform openly set pricing for scaled up access.
I nice case where non-profit open access is naturally self-funded.
What I find really weird is that I am stopping believing in the whole idea of free press, considering how the mainstream media is being bought by oligarchs around the globe. I think this is a good example of the erosion of trust in institutions in general. This won't end well.
Your idea of letting it be run by a non-profit makes me believe that you also don't trust institutions anymore.
But my trust depends on each institutions choices. Just as my trust in people varies based on their records.
Mostly, I trust everyone to be who they show themselves to be. Which can lean one way or the other, or be very mixed across different dimensions.
But, yes, governments and corporations which are steadily centralizing power are inherently untrustworthy. As they at best, are making us all vulnerable and less powerful as individuals. Meaning they are decreasing our freedom, not increasing it.
High inflation? No, the government LLM will tell us we're doing great.
i.e. the Nudge Unit on steroids...
care must be taken to avoid that.