Thread

1. jacquesm · 1789726316 · focus · HN ↗

   It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up. Crimes this large are crimes against humanity. So many people whose life's work got appropriated without consideration, compensation or consent it is baffling.

   It is said that at the heart of every great fortune there is a great crime, so it should be no surprise that the most valuable companies on the planet will most likely result from this crime. And given that justice can be bought by those with the most money you can forget about anything coming of this.

   1. TeMPOraL · 1789734845 · focus · HN ↗

      > It's the robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up.

      Except, of course, no one has actually been robbed, the culture has not been stolen - it's still there - nor are the people involved selling it back in any form. This rhetoric sounds impressive, but really looks more like "piracy is theft" line from early 2000s, similarly flawed in basic premise.

      Whether the end result threatens the form in which culture is created, at least beyond just threatening the business models of the gatekeepers, is a separate discussion, but you can't draw the heart-string-pulling "life's work got appropriated" arguments there so easily.

      And let's not forget what we got back for this: reified intelligence on a chip almost too cheap to meter, available to everyone across the world - not just rich West, inference is so dirt cheap that whole world uses it. It exploded in popularity organically, because of how many real problems of real people, including individuals and non-profits, it addresses.

      There's plenty to hate about how AI is transforming the world, but one thing it's not, is "robbery of all of our culture to sell it back to us at a mark-up".

      1. tripzilch · 1789735540 · focus · HN ↗

         What do you mean, it's already robbing me of the ability to discuss techniques with a number of my peers since they decided the mediocre output of LLMs is good enough instead of understanding what they are doing.

         In addition, a great number of people have decided to stop publishing their code publicly, and discuss techniques except in spaces they can be sure it's a one-on-one with a human being.

         Some things already got lost.

         1. TeMPOraL · 1789736551 · focus · HN ↗

            That's people problems though, namely:

            1) Lazy peers, and

            2) Spiteful peers with "dog in the manger" mentality.

            The latter case personally irks me, mostly because this often involves personal benefit (economical or moral) due to them claiming to give away knowledge for altruistic reasons, which later behavior reveals was a lie, mislabeling proprietary as open and free, to reap unfair gains.

            But that's all off-topic for this thread anyway.

            1. shepardrtc · 1789738978 · focus · HN ↗

               People creating free software for everyone to use, only to pull it away when suddenly there's a technology that can instantly let everyone use it at the drop of a hat, is not something I quite understand. If you're doing it so you show people, hey I made this, then you can still do that. If you're doing it to help the world, then that's very much happening. Of if you're doing it just for fun, that's possible too, though I totally understand how much less fun it is when AI can rip it out in a few minutes.

               1. latexr · 1789744985 · focus · HN ↗

                  > is not something I quite understand

                  I can only speak for myself, but right now working on open-source is even more thankless and shitty. Now any douche-knuckle comes to your repo and starts spamming you with bad PRs or issues as if their favourite LLM du jour has some fantastical insight they have to share with you, when it has already been explained ad nauseam that what they want is out of scope, or isn’t technically possible, or has tradeoffs XYZ.

                  You had lazy people before, sure, but those interactions were less frequent, shorter, and for each person I used to craft a careful response that would explain everything in detail and teach those I interacted with. But why would I waste my time crafting a reply that the person on the other side is just going to shove into their LLM and learn nothing?

                  Regarding open-source, LLMs make people more disrespectful of the people doing the work. And if you’re sharing your expertise for free to be disrespected, why bother?

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