Looks like it doesn't matter what I want, for progress is inevitable.

The big tech companies pushing AI not out of principles, but to increase shareholder value. As do countless smaller companies and open source projects. Progress is a side effect of greed after all.

The popular stable diffusion technology is now down to 100.000-300.000 Dollars in costs thanks to optimization. It used to costs tens of millions of Dollar. It is within the price range of a startup and spreads.

Once AI models are trained one time in earnest, they tend to get small enough to make the rounds within the ecosystem of startups and open source projects spreading technological progress.

And there is the military and government agencies. They tend to be more controlling, but technology developed once also finds the way out of their hands due to bribes. They are corrupt after all.

All in all, AI progress is accellerating fast. The entire AI ecosystem is moving right now with money being poured in.

As important, young talent is flocking to the field full speed, money is usefull but passion is even more important.