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 become pretty difficult in some areas due to cryptographic signatures that are either bound to the hardware or to online services.
Apple has feasibly stopped any modifications of iOS and their apps, for all practical purposes. These kinds of ecosystems will only continue to expand and to displace more open ones. We’re already at the point where arguably the most performant non-server hardware (Macs with the latest SoCs) is bound to a proprietary OS. Efforts like Asahi can easily be shut down by Apple with newer hardware.
LLMs are no help against proper cryptographic lockdown.
That's right, but other closed systems are kind of withering away (the two major consoles - Xbox and Playstation - are dying in favour of PC gaming).
We're at an inflection point because hardware progress has slowed down and while the mobile duopoly does benefit from network effects, in the long run those are outweighed by missteps by the incumbents. See how Windows has been a monopoly on the PC market for ages, then they've dropped the ball, Linux has grown then Microsoft got their shit together somewhat in order to catch up.
I don't think open / general-purpose computing is doomed in the future or anything like that, as long as there is demand for it, someone will supply it.
And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
> the two major consoles - Xbox and Playstation - are dying in favour of PC gaming
I’m pretty sure that it’s in favor of mobile gaming. The PC market is shrinking.
> And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
But not in manufacturing it. You’ll generally be even more disadvantaged in terms of hardware performance than open-weight models are compared to the proprietary frontier models.
eh to a degree. It leveled off at about 50% in 2018-2020 or so. And it’s not reasonable to assume that every person doing mobile gaming would have otherwise gamed on consoles/PCs, so how much of that is growth in “the gamer” population matters a lot. Part of the draw mobile gaming is it’s very accessible. Usually simple controls and everyone already has the hardware in their pocket. So the total population went up, of which a lot was claimed by Mobile.
Now I’m very curious to look into this more in depth as I’m doing a fair bit of speculating. If I find any good info I’ll update this
A small pointer, it's hard to do interpret statistics because most people play on multiple platforms. Roughly 75% of gamers play on mobile, 45% on PC and 40% on console.
I'm not 100% sure about the numbers, just off the top of my head about looking at market research, updated numbers welcome
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.
ciupicri · · focus · HN ↗
Right... I bet Microsoft wouldn't mind at all if I modify Windows or Office.
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
Apple has feasibly stopped any modifications of iOS and their apps, for all practical purposes. These kinds of ecosystems will only continue to expand and to displace more open ones. We’re already at the point where arguably the most performant non-server hardware (Macs with the latest SoCs) is bound to a proprietary OS. Efforts like Asahi can easily be shut down by Apple with newer hardware.
LLMs are no help against proper cryptographic lockdown.
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
We're at an inflection point because hardware progress has slowed down and while the mobile duopoly does benefit from network effects, in the long run those are outweighed by missteps by the incumbents. See how Windows has been a monopoly on the PC market for ages, then they've dropped the ball, Linux has grown then Microsoft got their shit together somewhat in order to catch up.
I don't think open / general-purpose computing is doomed in the future or anything like that, as long as there is demand for it, someone will supply it.
And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
layer8 · · focus · HN ↗
I’m pretty sure that it’s in favor of mobile gaming. The PC market is shrinking.
> And LLMs can also help you design your own hardware in the worst case:)
But not in manufacturing it. You’ll generally be even more disadvantaged in terms of hardware performance than open-weight models are compared to the proprietary frontier models.
Forgeties79 · · focus · HN ↗
Now I’m very curious to look into this more in depth as I’m doing a fair bit of speculating. If I find any good info I’ll update this
Pannoniae · · focus · HN ↗
A small pointer, it's hard to do interpret statistics because most people play on multiple platforms. Roughly 75% of gamers play on mobile, 45% on PC and 40% on console.
I'm not 100% sure about the numbers, just off the top of my head about looking at market research, updated numbers welcome