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.
Why do we need more? Why is that not a big enough reason.
If a modern-day Beethoven were told that his work will be slurped in by a machine and he will remain unknown to the world, would it be acceptable to him? To you?
Context: I was accused of raising a strawman argument. I was explaining that I don't think it's a strawman, and your comment suggests you agree.
It's a perfectly good reason, but I lament the loss of people who are doing open source just to get credit much less than I would lament the loss of people doing open source because they wanted to contribute to a shared commons.
Fame only has utility so long as it gets you paid. If you can get paid without being famous, that's probably a win.
I'm not very concerned about unrecognized genius: they are all around us, and the usual rule is that we've never heard of them. I think the that's just fine.
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.
matsemann · · focus · HN ↗
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
sriram_malhar · · focus · HN ↗
If a modern-day Beethoven were told that his work will be slurped in by a machine and he will remain unknown to the world, would it be acceptable to him? To you?
rpdillon · · focus · HN ↗
It's a perfectly good reason, but I lament the loss of people who are doing open source just to get credit much less than I would lament the loss of people doing open source because they wanted to contribute to a shared commons.
Fame only has utility so long as it gets you paid. If you can get paid without being famous, that's probably a win.
I'm not very concerned about unrecognized genius: they are all around us, and the usual rule is that we've never heard of them. I think the that's just fine.
sriram_malhar · · focus · HN ↗
Fame can have many good reasons. Just feeling the warm glow of adulation is plenty enough for some.