AI Analysis from the Field – Newsletter - Week 11
Dion Wiggins
CTO at Omniscien Technologies | Board Member | Strategic Advisor | Consultant | Author
Meta:
This week, the gap between the Big AI Bros' mythmaking and its reality blew wide open. While Meta is not alone, they are the focus this week due to their theft of human creativity, openwashing scams, and industrial-scale IP abuse. This isn’t oversight. It’s strategic theft at scale.
Meta’s LLaMA debacle didn’t just expose corporate arrogance—it revealed deliberate theft, systemic manipulation, and a model where industrial-scale IP abuse is normalized. If you ever doubted that the Big AI Bros' foundations are rotten, this week erased it.
AI Idiots:
Meanwhile, the cultural tides are shifting. As the Era of the AI Idiot accelerates, a growing number of voices are refusing to play along. Critical thinking is staging a comeback—and it's coming for the hype merchants, fake experts, and narrative hijackers who thought they could drown it out—but it’s rising faster than they expected. The fight for AI’s future isn’t technical anymore—it’s moral, cultural, and existential.
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While totally different, they have a common theme, the scams, the imposters, the posturing, and the theft. For Meta, it is theft of creativity and human work; for the AI Idiots, it is the attention theft. But from both sides, it is theater—performed with the confidence of con artists who believe the audience will never catch on.
This week ripped away the last polite fiction: the AI economy is running on stolen labor, manufactured ignorance, and broken governance. If we want a different future—one built on real innovation, real consent, and real sovereignty—it’s up to us to fight for it.
The stakes are higher now. But so are the opportunities for those willing to think—and fight—smarter.
If we stay silent, the creators who built the internet will vanish like our old blue friend Skype—not with a fight, but with slow neglect, careless abandonment, and a silence so deep no one even remembers they were killed off. They will be smothered—stripped of purpose, abandoned to rot, and erased without even the dignity of a proper goodbye. Forgotten, discarded, and killed by the very hands that once promised to protect them.
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The Week in Review
1. We Are Living in the Era of the AI Idiot
It’s not just hype anymore—it’s strategic stupidity at scale. From politicians regulating what they don't understand, to executives deploying AI without a risk model, to LinkedIn influencers laundering ChatGPT outputs as "thought leadership," we’re watching the industrialization of ignorance. This manifesto lays it all bare—and offers a rallying cry to the builders, the critical thinkers, and the real innovators: Push back. Because in the Era of the AI Idiot, silence is surrender.
2. Meta Stole Millions of Books to Train AI—Then Called Them Worthless. Now They’re Suing to Silence One
First Meta stole millions of books. Then they claimed those books were "worthless" in court to dodge liability. Then, when a whistleblower exposed the truth, Meta tried to silence them with legal threats. This forensic breakdown exposes Meta’s cynical defenses—and shows how theft, denial, and retaliation have become core parts of the Big AI business model. If this strategy succeeds, every creator’s work—your work—becomes open season.
3. Meta Shows Exactly What Happens When Laws Fail to Keep Up With Technology
When billion-dollar AI models are trained on millions of pirated books—and no one is held accountable—it’s not innovation, it’s industrialized theft. This deep-dive lays out how Meta knowingly used pirated data, stripped copyright pages, masked the sources, and pushed forward without legal clearance. And the legal system? Too slow, too broken, and too forgiving to stop it. Until we treat digital theft like real theft and create serious penalties for industrial IP laundering, Big Tech will keep raiding the commons unchecked.
4. When Meta Called It LLaMA, They Accidentally Told the Truth
Meta’s branding was supposed to be clever. Instead, it exposed everything. Like real llamas, Meta spits—on publishers, creators, copyright, ethics, the legal system, and transparency itself. LLaMA models fail 9 out of 10 open-source tests, hijack the credibility of real open source, and weaponize marketing spin to bulldoze critics. This article dissects the dark irony behind the name—and how Meta didn’t just brand a model, they accidentally branded their entire corporate ethos.
5. Ode to Skype and Simpler Times
Before productivity became punishment and software turned into Frankenstacks of complexity, there was Skype: simple, honest, and human. This short, bittersweet eulogy reflects on what we lost when tech stopped trying to connect people—and started trying to "manage" them instead. A reminder that simpler isn’t lesser. Sometimes, it’s the most powerful thing there is.
Closing Reflection
This wasn’t just another noisy week in AI. It was the week the mask slipped—and the real faces of theft, hype, and hollow governance stared back at us.
The only question now is whether we’ll pretend not to see it—or whether we’ll build something better in its place.
The stakes have never been higher.
The choice has never been clearer.
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#AI #DigitalSovereignty #CreatorsRights #AIGovernance #TechAccountability #AIIdiots #Meta
About the Author
Dion Wiggins is Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Omniscien Technologies, where he leads the development of Language Studio—a secure, regionally hosted AI platform built for digital sovereignty. Language Studio powers advanced natural language processing, machine translation, generative AI, and media workflows for governments, enterprises, and institutions seeking to maintain control over their data, narratives, and computational autonomy. The platform has become a trusted solution for sovereignty-first AI infrastructure, with global clients and major public sector entities.
A pioneer of the Asian Internet economy, Dion Wiggins founded one of Asia’s first Internet Service Providers—Asia Online in Hong Kong—and has since advised hundreds of multinational corporations including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, HP, IBM, Dell, Cisco, Red Hat, Intuit, BEA Systems, Tibco, Cognos, BMC Software, Novell, Sun Microsystems, LVMH, and many others.
With over 30 years at the intersection of technology, geopolitics, and infrastructure, Dion is a globally recognized authority on AI governance, cybersecurity, digital sovereignty, and cross-border data regulation. He is credited with coining the term “Great Firewall of China,” and his strategic input into national ICT frameworks was later adopted into China’s 11th Five-Year Plan.
Dion has advised governments and ministries across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and beyond on national ICT strategy, data policy, infrastructure modernization, and AI deployment—often at the ministerial and intergovernmental level. His counsel has helped shape sovereign technology agendas in both emerging and advanced digital economies.
As Vice President and Research Director at Gartner, Dion led global research on outsourcing, cybersecurity, e-government, and open-source adoption. His insights have influenced public and private sector strategies across Asia Pacific, Latin America, and Europe, supporting decision-makers at the highest levels.
Dion received the Chairman’s Commendation Award from Bill Gates for software innovation and was granted the U.S. O-1 Visa for Extraordinary Ability, a designation reserved for individuals recognized as having risen to the top 5% of their field globally.
A seasoned speaker and policy advisor, Dion has delivered insights at over 1,000 international forums, including the key note for Gartner IT Symposium/Xpo, United Nations events, ministerial summits, and major global tech conferences. His analysis has been featured in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Time, CNN, Bloomberg, MSBC, BBC, and more than 100,000 media citations.
At the core of his mission is a belief that sovereignty in the digital era is not a luxury—it’s a necessity.
“The future will not be open by default—it will be sovereign by design, or not at all.”