Two years ago I asked my CEO if we should use ChatGPT.
"It leaks everything we're doing," I said.
His answer: "Everyone's using it. If we don't, we're behind."
He was right. That's the trap.
The Competitive Ratchet
Your competitor uses Claude or GPT to move faster. If you don't, you fall behind. So you use the tools. Everyone does. And every conversation, every codebase, every strategy goes into their servers.
The ratchet only turns one way. Better models become essential. Essential means more data. More data means better models. Self-hosted alternatives fall further behind.
Not All AI Companies Carry the Same Risk
Anthropic only does AI. They're not building a competing product in your market.
Google does everything. They see you building a travel startup through Gemini - that's competitive intelligence feeding a company that might crush you in that exact space.
OpenAI has the governance chaos, the Microsoft relationship, the pivot from nonprofit to "capped profit" to whatever comes next.
The safety branding is real. Whether it matches reality is a different question.
You'll keep using these tools. So will everyone else. That's the trap.