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.
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.
genghisjahn · · focus · HN ↗
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗
joquarky · · focus · HN ↗
geraneum · · focus · HN ↗