>> ... around tools that I do not own.

That just may be dependent on how much trust you have on the providers you use. Or do you do your own electricity generation?

That's quite a reductio ad absurdum. No, I don't generate my own electricity (though I could). But I don't use tools for work that can change out from under me at any moment, or that can increase 10x in price on a corporate whim.

And why would that require running AI models locally? You can be in essentially full control by using open source (/open weight) models (DeepSeek etc.) running on exchangable cloud providers that are as replaceable as your electricity provider.

Sure, I guess you can do that as long as you use an open weight model. (Offline support is a nice perk, however.)

We align.

I tend to do the same thing. I do not consider myself as a good representative of an average user though.

In my country things like electricity and water supply are considered a right and a supplier has to go to court to get a supply shut off. Unfortunately we don't yet consider an internet connection in the same way, despite the government essentially requiring it these days.

Even then you're still dependent on someone training new models on sketchy data sources that they don't own.