Should everyone have access to ChatGPT? AI for all raises some important, yet difficult, questions (www.techradar.com)

Reports that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman floated giving every UK citizen free access to ChatGPT Plus — a proposal said to cost up to £2 billion and ultimately not pursued — rekindled a wider debate: should powerful LLMs be treated as a universal public utility? Proponents argue universal access could boost productivity, level digital inequalities, and make AI a mainstream tool like email or the web. Making premium AI widely available could democratize capabilities such as fast summarization, brainstorming, and content generation, helping under-resourced students and workers. But the idea carries material risks for the AI/ML community and society. Large language models are highly persuasive yet prone to “hallucinations,” and their outputs mirror the biases and geopolitical slants of their training data and builders — problems that can cascade through government and corporate decision chains. Universal free access also raises dependency and market-concentration concerns: subsidizing one firm effectively hands public knowledge infrastructure to a private actor. Practical middle paths include broad but limited free tiers paired with digital-literacy programs, transparency about model limits, robust guardrails, and investment in open-source or publicly governed models. The conversation isn’t just about access; it’s about governance, accountability, and readiness to manage both the public good and public hazard of AI.