I really don't get those takes. AI is the best thing that ever happened to the Free Software world, it is basically turning any software into Free Software. You can just throw file formats, protocols or even plain binaries at the AI and it'll reverse engineer everything in a pinch. Users can finally modify software themselves, which was always the goal of the Free Software world, but very rarely happened in actuality, since it was just so damn complicated. AI lowered the barrier of entry tremendously, not just in terms of required knowledge, but especially time. Same with Creative Commons, sharing art and stuff, was a nice gesture, but rarely useful, since the level of work to modify a work to fit your project was pretty close to just doing it from scratch anyway. With AI everybody can toy around with image generators and get what they want.
Is a social contract being broken? Yeah, kind of, but the problems that that contract existed to solve are no longer a thing. Creation is now easy and commodified. We finally have computer we can interact with in natural language, something people tried to do for at least 70 years and never made any significant progress on until LLM arrived.
If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend. We are essentially living in the StarTrek future with Holodecks and replicators and people still find reason to complain.
> If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend.
Exactly this. I've been very confused by the free software advocates that seemed to hate AI until I realized their reasons for releasing software under an open source license were very different than what I assumed they were.
While Stallman may have been originally upset about his printer, the primary motivation behind open source software is:
Nothing up my sleeve.
This of course requires audit and that requires that the code is written for human consumption, otherwise nobody will bother. Sure you can vibe a printer driver but how sure are you that your LLM didn't include a backdoor in the millions line of slop?
Trusting software produced by others is not a new problem; I consider AI to be a tool, and so my techniques for establishing trust are the same as they have always been. I look at the person wielding the tool.
I look at the whole chain of influence behind them, and it's quite a lot more upsetting than the smiling face I interact with.
The whole "AI is a Lovecraftian tentacle monster wearing a smiley face" thing applies to simple bureaucracies (replace Lovecraft with Kafka), to corporations (replace Lovecraft with IDK, most anarchists?), and governments (Orwell?)
Tools made by tools made by tools, along more steps than most people know even when their job is one of them. Somewhere there's a kid working a dangerous mine without the right safety equipment, elsewhere there's a sweatshop, another place a "reeducation camp".
But who do I see? A cashier, mostly. Someone whose job involves smiling to customers even when we're idiots.
I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. I put trust in individual people, not organizations. You seem to be making a point about supply chains, but I'm not sure how it relates to the point about trust. You seem to be making a different point about some kind of exploitation.
Almost everything I interact with was made by an organisation (or a disorganisation), not by an individual.
Say I download an app. Who made it? The programmer? Their PM? Apple's store requirements? The US government, for whom there was a special tickbox I had to agree to last time I uploaded an app?
Trust is for the mechanic, driver, builder; but for 90% of my interactions I have to trust my government set good rules and other people followed them.
I can't do this with AI, neither good rules nor them being followed, but I also can't do it when the OS company and app devs are foreign, as they generally are to me now.
grumbel · · focus · HN ↗
Is a social contract being broken? Yeah, kind of, but the problems that that contract existed to solve are no longer a thing. Creation is now easy and commodified. We finally have computer we can interact with in natural language, something people tried to do for at least 70 years and never made any significant progress on until LLM arrived.
If you want to gatekeep or only create stuff to boost your own ego or portfolio, then AI might be an issue, if you actually want to build stuff, AI is godsend. We are essentially living in the StarTrek future with Holodecks and replicators and people still find reason to complain.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
Exactly this. I've been very confused by the free software advocates that seemed to hate AI until I realized their reasons for releasing software under an open source license were very different than what I assumed they were.
za_creature · · focus · HN ↗
Nothing up my sleeve.
This of course requires audit and that requires that the code is written for human consumption, otherwise nobody will bother. Sure you can vibe a printer driver but how sure are you that your LLM didn't include a backdoor in the millions line of slop?
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
I look at the whole chain of influence behind them, and it's quite a lot more upsetting than the smiling face I interact with.
The whole "AI is a Lovecraftian tentacle monster wearing a smiley face" thing applies to simple bureaucracies (replace Lovecraft with Kafka), to corporations (replace Lovecraft with IDK, most anarchists?), and governments (Orwell?)
Tools made by tools made by tools, along more steps than most people know even when their job is one of them. Somewhere there's a kid working a dangerous mine without the right safety equipment, elsewhere there's a sweatshop, another place a "reeducation camp".
But who do I see? A cashier, mostly. Someone whose job involves smiling to customers even when we're idiots.
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
ben_w · · focus · HN ↗
Say I download an app. Who made it? The programmer? Their PM? Apple's store requirements? The US government, for whom there was a special tickbox I had to agree to last time I uploaded an app?
Trust is for the mechanic, driver, builder; but for 90% of my interactions I have to trust my government set good rules and other people followed them.
I can't do this with AI, neither good rules nor them being followed, but I also can't do it when the OS company and app devs are foreign, as they generally are to me now.