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.
I get kicks out of developing novel solutions to unsolved problems. I might be wrong, but I like to think it's the kind of stuf LLMs are not yet great at. Call me selfish, but I now have absolutely zero interest in sharing my findings with the world because of LLMs, since once I do, LLM companies can start selling my work.
LLMs evened the battlefield for all that has been developed so far, but what about future discoveries? I think it remains to be seen if LLMs can come up with these novel solutions rendering innovators useless. If not, then LLMs might be crippled by software becoming more closed in the future.
They could, but I could always hope they wouldn't, and most of the time I wouldn't be disappointed. AI companies don't even have means to attribute to someone the solution they're selling.
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.
tikotus · · focus · HN ↗
LLMs evened the battlefield for all that has been developed so far, but what about future discoveries? I think it remains to be seen if LLMs can come up with these novel solutions rendering innovators useless. If not, then LLMs might be crippled by software becoming more closed in the future.
nayroclade · · focus · HN ↗
tikotus · · focus · HN ↗