Why is AI often free?

[Wolfgang]

What do Musk and Google etc. gain from making AI available free of charge?

[David]

xai, Grok is not free. There is a basic version on twitter for users but it's not very good.

Many models are open source, you can run locally, deepseek, qwen, mistral etc.. Some are excellent now. Depending on hardware, some can run medium size model on a regular PC. I can run QWEN next 80b on my pc. It's far better than many online larger model.

So there are small model, they are fast, nod bad with math but often inaccurate. They can task like translation and much more with MCP servers now. And large model with a lot of knowledge that are impossible to run locally.

The smaller models are just promotion for other service. Beside they use you data to build their knowledge, but i think this is useless. What i see now is the bigger the model the more biases and stubborn, so less intelligent.
The best models in the 80b-300b size, with the q8 versions version to be reliable enough to be run locally.

[Wolfgang]

So you think they offer free trial versions so that people will buy their paid AI?

Like a drug dealer giving out the first shot for free?

So AI is an addiction? Yes... ok... looking at how you use it, you could say that....

[Wolfgang]

Seriously: AI is undoubtedly the devil's work. Just like drugs, it will lead humanity into dependency.

Without AI, we will simply no longer be able to think independently.

[David]

Unfortunately you are likely right.

This was already a problem with every online services, Facebook, Google etc.. It a waste of time in many instances.

This just make it worse. Like everything it should be use with balance.

To say it would replace mathematicians, physicists and programmer it still not the case. Likely never will be. AI does not have the intuition and broader and intricate understanding we can achieve. It also makes many errors.

The way i use it is decompose problems in parts and work out those "parts" and recombine them later. Too much context and AI fails every time. As i said, before it just as good as the data it's trained on. Thus strong biases with training. This does not leave much room for exploration if most of the data is just used as confirmation biases.

What AI is good at consistently is searching for online references, summarizing work. Instead of searching for hours on google i can find stuff buried in archives in a few minutes. So it's great for investigating and search.

Here is an example that took 2 min.
https://grok.com/share/bGVnYWN5_ab4b0c1 ... d7d7c453b9

[David]

[Wolfgang]

Despite all its current shortcomings, AI is already surpassing the knowledge of many people.

These are the less educated segments of society who have always found independent thinking to be a burden. AI is being foisted on them free of charge. It is now found in many search engines and translation tools.

At this moment, a significant percentage of Western and Asian societies are already under the control of AI machines. And behind these machines are financially powerful global corporations.

It all happens so terribly fast. Like a tsunami. It goes wrong faster than we can blink.

[David]

Well yes. It as always been the case since the dawn of time.

66% of people will blindly obey the authority figure without questioning anything.

AI just make it look like it's unbiased but it's the opposite. It then becomes another tool of propaganda.

Nullius in verba.

[Wolfgang]

Nothing against little helpers that make our lives easier. Using these little helpers was only possible with good qualifications. Machines, computers, communication, mobility.

But never before in human history have there been little helpers that simplify thinking. With the exception of a few AI insiders, we will become stupid.

[David]

I don't know. If i had more time time i would to go back to school to learn more math, calculus..

So i guess that depend on each individuals. These tools should be banned in schools, but it would be impossible to enforce at home.

We cannot stop progress. If I had to choose between this mess and living on a small farm and being more self sufficient i would choose the later, most likely.