The most powerful AI models are starting to look less like products and more like passes into a closed club.

Publicly, we hear: “safety,” “staged rollout,” “available soon.”

In practice: some people get GPT-5.6 now, while everyone else waits for permission.

That is a dangerous precedent.

Because the real divide won’t be between people who use AI and people who don’t.

It will be between those who got the best AI in time — and those who got it after the game had already started.