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.
> …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.
> Creation is now easy and commodified.
> 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.
Reading these made me realized how much people WANT to do something without having to involve with the process of making it.
The last quote is implying that the reason for having issues with AI is gatekeeping or ego, while the actual reason is creators don’t want to create stuff for absolutely nothing.
That aside, one thing relatively rare in discussions about AI-facilitated creations is that while AI enables creation without skills, it also takes the need for collaboration away resulting in less creativity. You used to need a small team for a project, and every discussion would have opinions from team members with diversity in expertise and background which often sparks something novel. OR if you prefer working solo, you’d need to learn various skills to cover all fronts of the project. At one point, you possess a niche set of skills that could lead to innovation. AI takes those opportunities for something new away and replaces them with something else that already existed on the internet. Of course, not everything needs fundamental understanding, especially in the world of optimization and speed, but right now the internet is swarmed by “stuff” that everyone built using the same lego bricks and it’s become less and less interesting.
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.
bagelcollie · · focus · HN ↗
> Creation is now easy and commodified.
> 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.
Reading these made me realized how much people WANT to do something without having to involve with the process of making it. The last quote is implying that the reason for having issues with AI is gatekeeping or ego, while the actual reason is creators don’t want to create stuff for absolutely nothing.
That aside, one thing relatively rare in discussions about AI-facilitated creations is that while AI enables creation without skills, it also takes the need for collaboration away resulting in less creativity. You used to need a small team for a project, and every discussion would have opinions from team members with diversity in expertise and background which often sparks something novel. OR if you prefer working solo, you’d need to learn various skills to cover all fronts of the project. At one point, you possess a niche set of skills that could lead to innovation. AI takes those opportunities for something new away and replaces them with something else that already existed on the internet. Of course, not everything needs fundamental understanding, especially in the world of optimization and speed, but right now the internet is swarmed by “stuff” that everyone built using the same lego bricks and it’s become less and less interesting.