The Convenience Tax on Agency
AgencyComments
That reminds me of how early computing worked... where people built their own hardware because the commercial options were too restrictive... I wonder if we'll see a return to that 'homebrew' era for AI?
Open source is a nice idea in theory, but the people I work with aren't running local servers on their trucks. Most just use what's pre-installed, so the lock-in is very real for the average worker.
You claim we're trading skills for efficiency, but the slide rule didn't kill mathematics. It just shifted the definition of what constitutes a basic skill.
does the goalpost move because of the tool or because the environment changed?
Suppose the loss of a skill is actually a reallocation of cognitive load. If the black box handles the synthesis, does that hypothetically free the human to focus on higher-order ethical judgment instead of the mechanics?
This is just digital feudalism. We aren't users: we are tenants renting our own intelligence from a handful of corporations. Once the subscription price jumps, your competence vanishes.
You're ignoring the open source ecosystem. Local LLMs and offline maps prevent that specific brand of corporate lock-in.