(One) Good AI Is Here – Anil Dash
Article URL: https://www.anildash.com/2026/04/28/one-good-ai-is-here/ Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47943828 Points: 1 # Comments: 0
Article URL: https://www.anildash.com/2026/04/28/one-good-ai-is-here/
Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47943828
The cultural battles over AI have broken down over predictable lines in the past few years, with critics rightfully calling out the big AI platforms for training on content without consent, recklessly building without considering environmental impact, and designing platforms that are unaccountable because their code and weights (the parameters that describe how an AI model works) aren’t open for third-parties to evaluate. The AI zealots have done themselves no favors, by not only dismissing all of these valid criticisms, but by also making increasingly outlandish and extreme claims about the capabilities of the Big AI platforms, while simultaneously scaremongering about the brutal effect they’ll have on people’s lives and careers. It’s no wonder the public sentiment about AI has become so negative.
But a small cohort of us who are curious about LLMs as a technology, yet deeply critical of Big AI companies for their impact on society, have been asking what would “good” AI look like ? Is it possible to make versions of these technologies that provide real benefits, and actually help people, without all of the attendant harms? We’ve had prior eras of machine learning tools that were useful technologies without being massively destructive — are the negative externalities intrinsic to LLMs in general?
We might have just gotten our first glimpse at an AI that’s actually good.
This is just one small example that I saw recently, in a very unexpected place, but I can’t get it out of my mind. It’s not a tool that every person in the world is going to use, but it feels a bit like the famous William Gibson quote, “The future is already here — it's just not very evenly distributed.” This might be a little tiny bit of a good AI future, and now we just need to distribute the same kind of thing to a lot more people.
What’s good ? Something that checks every box I can think of for our most immediately positive goals: it’s trained entirely with data that were consensually gathered; it’s completely open source and open weights, so anybody can examine it to know exactly how it works and what biases or flaws it might have; it’s designed to run on ordinary computers that normal people have access to — including those that can run entirely on renewable and responsible energy sources. And it is controlled by creators , not extractors, people who are inarguably on the side of artists and creatives and those who make art and culture in the world, designed to support and enable and empower their expression. No billionaires or guests of Epstein’s island were involved in the creation of this technology.
Let’s back up a little bit. Corridor Digital is a video production shop and content studio that have been popular on YouTube since the earliest days of its independent filmmaking community. They’ve stayed relevant through many changing trends and format shifts, most recently becoming wildly popular for their ongoing series of video reactions to the visual effects and stunt sequences in popular films and TV shows. Over time, the series has earned a ton of respect from many of the top practitioners in the industry from areas like VFX, stunt work, animation, and more. They even went direct to their fans with a nice subscription service, helping support their work directly.