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.
An alternative near future is that what you're describing is used to undermine/rightswash strong copyleft free software for use in proprietary products, while owners of proprietary software (and big movie studios and record labels) start protecting themselves with EULAs forbidding ingestion of the works into LLMs.
Another possibility is the one others sketched, where truly user-controlled models are legislated away.
Do we really believe that Rockstar would be ok with someone feeding GTA6 to a hypothetical LLM and get a "free" reimplementation out? If that world were to come to fruition, I'd maybe buy the "best thing to happen to free software" story. Otherwise, my bets are on "complete and utter stomping of small IP rights holders in favor of giant ones". In that world, free software is in real trouble. Together with indie artists and writers. I lament how many people don't seem to take this scenario seriously.
> An alternative near future is that what you're describing is used to undermine/rightswash strong copyleft free software for use in proprietary products
So what? It's a future where software can be created on demand with the push of a button. Why care about some dinky little Free Software tool getting abused when everybody can rewrite it from scratch in an instant?
> Another possibility is the one others sketched, where truly user-controlled models are legislated away.
Even that isn't going to stop people from just paying a few dollar and writing whatever software they want or releasing it under Free Software license.
> Do we really believe that Rockstar would be ok with someone feeding GTA6 to a hypothetical LLM and get a "free" reimplementation out?
They can't stop you from feeding a few photos of Miami into the AI and instructing it to make a game with gangsters and car theft out of it. Astra can already one-shot a GTA1-style game, give it another year and they might be able to do GTA3 and sooner or later they'll work their way up to GTA6. All of this will happen in a time frame much shorter than what it took to go from GTA5 to GTA6 the old way.
> my bets are on "complete and utter stomping of small IP rights holders in favor of giant ones".
Of course small IP holders will be stomped on, but not because of copyright, but simply because their IP is worthless now. AI is making creation so easy that there will a oversupply of everything. With the budget of a single big Hollywood blockbuster you can make around 1000 full length AI movies at current prices. When there is 1000x as much stuff out there, it's just going a lot harder to stand out. And cost is only going to go down.
> Why care about some dinky little Free Software tool getting abused when everybody can rewrite it from scratch in an instant?
Three primary reasons:
1) Human, individual control. If you don't see that, you've probably not thought warmly of the FOSS movement even today.
2) These models never write stuff from scratch. They were trained on a huge body of FOSS work! "From scratch" is an enraging lie!
3) Even if all the technological innovations you wish for come to fruition, your comparison is as dumb as "why paint paintings when there are cameras" or "why run when their are cars" or "why lift weights when there are forklifts". It's like you've never met a human.
Before I engage with your points further, it'd be nice to know where you stand re the big IP holders. You kinda avoided my question. In the world you sketch, will it be OK to feed a model GTA6 or the latest hollywood movie and have it "rewrite them from scratch in an instant" (your wording, I would never call this "from scratch")?
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.
gspr · · focus · HN ↗
An alternative near future is that what you're describing is used to undermine/rightswash strong copyleft free software for use in proprietary products, while owners of proprietary software (and big movie studios and record labels) start protecting themselves with EULAs forbidding ingestion of the works into LLMs.
Another possibility is the one others sketched, where truly user-controlled models are legislated away.
Do we really believe that Rockstar would be ok with someone feeding GTA6 to a hypothetical LLM and get a "free" reimplementation out? If that world were to come to fruition, I'd maybe buy the "best thing to happen to free software" story. Otherwise, my bets are on "complete and utter stomping of small IP rights holders in favor of giant ones". In that world, free software is in real trouble. Together with indie artists and writers. I lament how many people don't seem to take this scenario seriously.
grumbel · · focus · HN ↗
So what? It's a future where software can be created on demand with the push of a button. Why care about some dinky little Free Software tool getting abused when everybody can rewrite it from scratch in an instant?
> Another possibility is the one others sketched, where truly user-controlled models are legislated away.
Even that isn't going to stop people from just paying a few dollar and writing whatever software they want or releasing it under Free Software license.
> Do we really believe that Rockstar would be ok with someone feeding GTA6 to a hypothetical LLM and get a "free" reimplementation out?
They can't stop you from feeding a few photos of Miami into the AI and instructing it to make a game with gangsters and car theft out of it. Astra can already one-shot a GTA1-style game, give it another year and they might be able to do GTA3 and sooner or later they'll work their way up to GTA6. All of this will happen in a time frame much shorter than what it took to go from GTA5 to GTA6 the old way.
> my bets are on "complete and utter stomping of small IP rights holders in favor of giant ones".
Of course small IP holders will be stomped on, but not because of copyright, but simply because their IP is worthless now. AI is making creation so easy that there will a oversupply of everything. With the budget of a single big Hollywood blockbuster you can make around 1000 full length AI movies at current prices. When there is 1000x as much stuff out there, it's just going a lot harder to stand out. And cost is only going to go down.
gspr · · focus · HN ↗
Three primary reasons:
1) Human, individual control. If you don't see that, you've probably not thought warmly of the FOSS movement even today.
2) These models never write stuff from scratch. They were trained on a huge body of FOSS work! "From scratch" is an enraging lie!
3) Even if all the technological innovations you wish for come to fruition, your comparison is as dumb as "why paint paintings when there are cameras" or "why run when their are cars" or "why lift weights when there are forklifts". It's like you've never met a human.
Before I engage with your points further, it'd be nice to know where you stand re the big IP holders. You kinda avoided my question. In the world you sketch, will it be OK to feed a model GTA6 or the latest hollywood movie and have it "rewrite them from scratch in an instant" (your wording, I would never call this "from scratch")?