This is probably the true purpose behind AI
TL;DR: AI gives its providers the potential to control the world.
AI is cheaper to use and produces faster results than human workers, so for many companies choosing AI over human workers is the obviously better idea. Or is it?
The AI the companies use is dependent on the existence of the data centres, ones that cost hundreds of billions of dollars to build, crippling the world wide supply of important electronic components such as transistors.
And the training of the AIs is completely dependent on stolen data.
So it's not like one could create another AI that could compete with the ones owned by the megacorpos.
The companies that adopt the use of AI become dependent on the AI provided by those megacorpos. So here is a question: If the companies who were dependent on AI suddenly had their access to AI cut off, what would happen to them?
They would collapse.
They could try hiring new workers, but new workers initiation would take time and with their company model based around the existence of AI, too many changes would have to be made.
They would probably only have the minimum amount of human personnel and be in no capacity to suddenly hire that many new workers - if they could even find such new workers.
WIth all the sudden new hires and restructuring, their expenses would greatly increase, their production would have to slow down even further for the sake of new employee training and restructuring, their investors would flee and well...
In the end only a few companies might survive. And even the ones that will will be crippled.
OpenAI can cut the AI access to those companies. It's a product. They can refuse to sell their product. They did not sign any work contracts with those companies. All they need to do is refund the tokens, or simply stop the sale of their tokens to those companies.
The companies that choose to rely on AI, are putting their fate in the hands of the few megacorpos controlling the distribution of AI.
Of course, they won't just suddenly crash them. No. But they will keep on increasing the price of the so-called AI tokens which the companies rely on for the use of AI.
It has already happened before and it will happen again.
The companies will feel the effects of the increasing prices more and more, but by then it will already be too late to regret their decisions.
In order to afford the price of the tokens and retain their access to the AI, they will have to increase the price of their producs, use cheaper materials, invest less in work safety and quality, layoff anyone they deem unnecessary and increase the pressure on the remaining workers, until finally they crumble under the pressure. Or maybe they could gain a more affordable access to the AI tokens by doing whatever the AI providers request of them.
And for as long as they use AI, no matter how much wrong the AI providers cause, they will have to stay silent about it and even defend them, lest they lose their AI access.
Because that would definitely put them under.