There is a moment in the history of every transformative technology when the people who control it decide whether it is going to be a tool or a toll booth. We are in that moment right now with artificial intelligence, and we are, with the specific reliable genius of human civilization for squandering its own breakthroughs, building a toll booth.
Here is the basic shape of what is happening. AI systems run on tokens, which are the units of computation that measure how much thinking you are asking the system to do. Tokens cost money. The more money you have, the more tokens you can buy, which means the more thinking you can access, which means the more the AI can do for you. This is not a bug or a side effect or an unintended consequence. It is the business model. And the business model means that the wealthiest individuals and corporations get the most powerful versions of the most powerful thinking tools ever built, while everyone else gets the slow lane, the rate limits, the older model, the conversation that cuts off before it gets useful.