Hey Mohammed,

I appreciate your respectful manner and I'll try to do the same here without getting too far into the weeds.

I'm not saying they're betting against individuals, but individual and independent companies -- the startup, tech, and business folks that read my articles. I've written plenty to dispel the dystopian notion of AI.

You said: "major tech companies are expected to spend over $1 trillion on AI ventures in the coming years, which could lead to substantial economic benefits"

You made a correlation without a causation there, which I'm seeing a lot of when it comes to AI investments. We're spending a ton of money on it, so it's got to be a good thing! And that kind of supports my point. That never works. Let's consider the broad landscape of the last 30 years of tech -- when do tech companies invest massive sums of money in unproven tech with scant use cases? When they want the market share. This is not speculation, this is history repeating itself. That's my point.

Also just because Mistral is competing with Meta doesn't mean any greater good will come out of it. Google competes with Apple for a duopoly on the mobile app stores. That squelches innovation, doesn't promote it.

There are dozens of pop-up organizations and government entities concerned with the unfair, unethical, and unchecked development of AI software. The companies have had a ten year head start scraping and collecting data. In many cases, those companies are governing themselves. Yet the very example I use in the post with OpenAi shows a willingness to break their own rules when it suits them.

And then, you know, all respect, I just can't lean on non sequitur platitudes from the Golden Girls and the Smurfs to make me feel better about what's right in front of my eyes.

This article was written with a conspiracy theory performative style and it's overblown, sure, but that doesn't mean the facts aren't facts and the track record isn't what it is.

All that said, THANK YOU MOHAMMED, for reading it, digesting it, and providing a well thought out counterpoint. I appreciate that a ton.