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.
> AI is the best thing that ever happened to the Free Software world, it is basically turning any software into Free Software.
I disagree. That claim makes no sense to me, but even ignoring this claim for the moment, you ignore the legal situation here. AI ultimately steal. If that can be proven in court, people and companies will be held responsible.
> 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.
I don't see any argument you gave for this claim, so it seems to be a baseless claim. Besides, god does not exist and assuming AI comes only with benefits and no trade-offs, is a very naive take.
The legal situation has been resolved: AI training doesn't transfer copyright as long as the AI isn't actually reproducing a copyrighted work. You can still violate copyright in the process of acquiring the training data. This is not speculation, this is the real outcome of the lawsuits against the AI companies.
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.
shevy-java · · focus · HN ↗
I disagree. That claim makes no sense to me, but even ignoring this claim for the moment, you ignore the legal situation here. AI ultimately steal. If that can be proven in court, people and companies will be held responsible.
> 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.
I don't see any argument you gave for this claim, so it seems to be a baseless claim. Besides, god does not exist and assuming AI comes only with benefits and no trade-offs, is a very naive take.
Marha01 · · focus · HN ↗
Why should any fan on Free Software care about that? Information wants to be free.
mitxela · · focus · HN ↗