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.
It's not a real problem. It's one of the most honest business models currently employed by tech companies - simple exchange of money for value. Training wasn't free and only few players on the planet had enough capital to perform it. Serving isn't free, it costs electricity (and maintenance). The companies that trained the models, and companies that serve inference, have all created real value at their own expense, and they're (for now) charging very little for it. The value users get from inference - that no one is even capturing right now, it's literally left on the table and goes 100% to the users.
Contrast that with most other businesses - tech or otherwise - where there's always strings and trickery attached to any transaction.
(Your argument reminded me of the oil industry and the (original argument for the) economic relationship between "Big Oil" and resource rich nations.)
> strings and trickery
One could argue that at this initial stage, just as with surveillance capitalism and services like "free email", the general public is being treated like the natives who sell their land for a few trinkets. Once we are passed this stage and just like other surveillance tech our social and economical life becomes effectively dependent on these services, we can review if we have not sold our future for some (arguably dubious) "value".
Go back to early '00s. How did you "value" the "transaction" of handing over the handling of your personal electronic correspondences to a corporate entity that may or may not be an extension of the security state?
I don't disagree. Fortunately, for as long as open-weight models continue to track SOTA with a few months lag, we lose at most those few months if big providers decide to stop playing nice with the people.
Aren't you paying attention to all the news? They have announced that this will be regulated. A technology that everyone is told "can kill us all" is going to be treated like WMDs. Enjoy those open source models while they are still legal.
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.
ssl232 · · focus · HN ↗
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
Contrast that with most other businesses - tech or otherwise - where there's always strings and trickery attached to any transaction.
yubblegum · · focus · HN ↗
> strings and trickery
One could argue that at this initial stage, just as with surveillance capitalism and services like "free email", the general public is being treated like the natives who sell their land for a few trinkets. Once we are passed this stage and just like other surveillance tech our social and economical life becomes effectively dependent on these services, we can review if we have not sold our future for some (arguably dubious) "value".
Go back to early '00s. How did you "value" the "transaction" of handing over the handling of your personal electronic correspondences to a corporate entity that may or may not be an extension of the security state?
TeMPOraL · · focus · HN ↗
yubblegum · · focus · HN ↗