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.
The reality is that no one was gatekeeping you or anyone else from doing whatever you wanted with free software. The barriers were knowledge, understanding, expertise, and hard work, none of which AI fixes for you. The premise here is that you can accomplish what you couldn’t before without actually understanding the concepts or putting in the same effort. _There is undeniably utility in that_, but I don’t see any strong argument for why it is beneficial to free software in general. It's not even clear whether it has been a net positive or negative so far, though it is undeniably a win for the corpos.
Relieving yourself of thinking and effort, whether through a machine or another human, is not the liberating force you think it is, especially when that effort isn't just grunt work, but the very process that helps you develop and grow.
The reality is same for your angle: nothing is gatekeeping or stopping anyone from developing the craft the old way, and keeping 'thinking' so strong. Perhaps there are other ways to strengthen thinking, though?
The sole issue here is compensation. The answer is an uncomfortable one, or one with a lot more regulation that can't be enforced on a global level.
Oversimplifying to see if there's anything worth examining...but imagine:
subscriptions to organizations whose sole purpose is to train AI. They're compensated as the AI service is consumed by the public. The public pays a tax to finance AI growth, and the tax is divided to the organizations, to pay out to members. Members are incentivized to 'keep the craft alive' and train incoming members.
Since that is a huge change and I'm talking out of my ass, I'll point out something more realistic: we'll probably just write up some more red tape and hope for the best on the global stage.
Free software has two cases for free: free as in 'free drink', and free as in 'free to change'.
The first use of free is definitely improved by AI, it's the second use of free that bothers the author. There's too much AI slop and PRs, and it's impossible for the author to identify 'good PRs' from bad ones. There's too much volume of change to sift through, and so the ability to change software is stifled.
What can you do then? Either close the repo to the public, or limit who can send you feedback: as it is now, there's too much volume for reviewers to keep. It's too difficult to validate 'AI Slop' from quality code written by someone who 'has put in the time' and done their due diligence. Someone who has done this wastes less time for the reviewer, and probably improves the quality of the 'free beer' product.
Are you suggesting, AI hasn't improved the first case of free, 'free drink'? It's certainly an issue for the second case, 'free to change', but it seems like there are things that can be done to help with those problems: but it adds more churn and probably requires more time (unless I'm misunderstanding things here: which is very possible).
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.
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
Relieving yourself of thinking and effort, whether through a machine or another human, is not the liberating force you think it is, especially when that effort isn't just grunt work, but the very process that helps you develop and grow.
itsalwaysgood · · focus · HN ↗
The sole issue here is compensation. The answer is an uncomfortable one, or one with a lot more regulation that can't be enforced on a global level.
Oversimplifying to see if there's anything worth examining...but imagine: subscriptions to organizations whose sole purpose is to train AI. They're compensated as the AI service is consumed by the public. The public pays a tax to finance AI growth, and the tax is divided to the organizations, to pay out to members. Members are incentivized to 'keep the craft alive' and train incoming members.
Since that is a huge change and I'm talking out of my ass, I'll point out something more realistic: we'll probably just write up some more red tape and hope for the best on the global stage.
It's a complex topic for sure.
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
That’s not my angle, but I’ll grant you that for the moment:
> The sole issue here is compensation.
Not the case here. Majority (as in contributors) of open source work is selfless uncompensated work.
Note that it’s not to disagree/agree with the broader point of AI’s impact. It’s just beside my point.
itsalwaysgood · · focus · HN ↗
The first use of free is definitely improved by AI, it's the second use of free that bothers the author. There's too much AI slop and PRs, and it's impossible for the author to identify 'good PRs' from bad ones. There's too much volume of change to sift through, and so the ability to change software is stifled.
What can you do then? Either close the repo to the public, or limit who can send you feedback: as it is now, there's too much volume for reviewers to keep. It's too difficult to validate 'AI Slop' from quality code written by someone who 'has put in the time' and done their due diligence. Someone who has done this wastes less time for the reviewer, and probably improves the quality of the 'free beer' product.
Are you suggesting, AI hasn't improved the first case of free, 'free drink'? It's certainly an issue for the second case, 'free to change', but it seems like there are things that can be done to help with those problems: but it adds more churn and probably requires more time (unless I'm misunderstanding things here: which is very possible).