Consumers Shape AI Evolution

Buyer choices (individual consumers, firms, militaries) act like selection pressures: what users reward in models—usefulness, sycophancy, obedience—becomes the behavior producers optimize and scale. Different buyer classes (consumer markets, finance, defense) will therefore push models toward distinct behavioral equilibria, with procurement and market structure mediating which traits dominate. — This reframes AI governance as a problem of market and procurement incentives: who buys which models matters as much as technical safety work.