Jack Ma warned about this almost a decade ago. Globalization was making giants richer. Millions of small businesses were being left behind. His idea was bold: why should globalization only work for corporations moving billions across borders? Let a farmer, a small factory, a local shop sell directly to the entire world. That's why he said Alibaba was fundamentally different from Amazon. Amazon wanted to build and control the infrastructure itself. Alibaba wanted to build a marketplace where other businesses could grow. Then data changed everything again. Alibaba used behavioral data from millions of users to catch counterfeits and give loans to people banks wouldn't even look at. Banks needed collateral. Alibaba looked at behavior. Today, AI is trying to do the same thing, at a much bigger scale. A three person company can suddenly have an AI researcher, an AI marketer, an AI designer, an AI developer, an AI translator, and an AI salesperson, all at once. On paper, that should mean small businesses have never had this much power. But there's another scenario. What if all that value gets captured by the companies that own the models, the chips, the data, and the platforms? What if AI isn't a tool of liberation, but the most efficient tool of concentration we've ever seen? Jack Ma believed technology could make globalization fair for the little guy. Almost ten years later, AI is finally going to test whether he was right, or naive. The billion dollar question: Does AI give everyone superpowers, or does it just hand control to an even smaller group of gatekeepers? Drop a comment: are you actually feeling this yourself? Is AI helping you grow, or are you becoming more dependent on platforms you don't control?