i thing i’m struggling with is AI has crossed a threshold where it’s actually useful for work, gasp, but the discourse has been so poisoned by over-hype and fascism it’s hard to talk about
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@yoasif i’m happy to engage on the harms.
broadly speaking i think harms currently outweighs benefits; as of today if i could wish the technology away i think i would. as it is we need to regulate it more.
that said, does how other people use the tool impact the morality of how i use it? i don’t know. i’m not sending people spam.
i don’t really believe in intellectual property so we can skip “theft”.
this mostly leaves us with environmental concerns and social upheaval.
as a programmer it feels hypocritical to wax and wane about automation being inherently bad; automating tasks has been my whole career.
environment is kind of the strongest angle, but that’s downstream of not having clean energy. if you could built it all on wind and solar power then it’d be OK
RE: https://mastodon.social/@yoasif/116301328058936154
@phillmv I think that if you don't believe in IP, it's hard to get to a place where you are going to convince people that AI is good, unless you can somehow convince people that IP shouldn't exist.
I can't get there personally, since I know that much of the code powering these models were taken from people who were contributing with the knowledge that their contributions would be free forever (copyleft), and I fear that that goes away.
How does copyleft exist in a world without copyright?
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@yoasif/116301328058936154
@phillmv I think that if you don't believe in IP, it's hard to get to a place where you are going to convince people that AI is good, unless you can somehow convince people that IP shouldn't exist.
I can't get there personally, since I know that much of the code powering these models were taken from people who were contributing with the knowledge that their contributions would be free forever (copyleft), and I fear that that goes away.
How does copyleft exist in a world without copyright?
@phillmv Beyond that, even if you believe in the abolition of copyright, what do we do about the stolen labor? Just ignore that it was stolen?
It isn't as if the LLM vendors are playing fair here - they knew that people were restricting their works under existing law, and instead of lobbying governments to abolish copyright, they are instead simply taking from the commons.
Should we simply ignore that?
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RE: https://mastodon.social/@yoasif/116301328058936154
@phillmv I think that if you don't believe in IP, it's hard to get to a place where you are going to convince people that AI is good, unless you can somehow convince people that IP shouldn't exist.
I can't get there personally, since I know that much of the code powering these models were taken from people who were contributing with the knowledge that their contributions would be free forever (copyleft), and I fear that that goes away.
How does copyleft exist in a world without copyright?
@yoasif copyleft is a hack that uses copyright as a way of enforcing contributions back to the commons. i generally license my code (A,L)GPL and i think ppl who complain about the GPL are fools
but! the important part is the existence of a commons, not the exact enforcement mechanism - i use a lot of MIT and Apache licensed code too. i prefer it when ppl are forced to share but sharing still happens without it
i wont go into too much detail cos im still working on a demo but my early vibe is the commons might stand to benefit; i think we’ll be able to use LLMs to clone proprietary software and place it in the commons
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@phillmv Beyond that, even if you believe in the abolition of copyright, what do we do about the stolen labor? Just ignore that it was stolen?
It isn't as if the LLM vendors are playing fair here - they knew that people were restricting their works under existing law, and instead of lobbying governments to abolish copyright, they are instead simply taking from the commons.
Should we simply ignore that?
@yoasif when Aaron Schwartz crawled all of JSTOR i thought that was cool. my ideal solution here is making all of JSTOR public.
i agree that the current equilibrium where only OpenAI and Anthropic get to copy all of JSTOR is deeply unfair.
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@yoasif copyleft is a hack that uses copyright as a way of enforcing contributions back to the commons. i generally license my code (A,L)GPL and i think ppl who complain about the GPL are fools
but! the important part is the existence of a commons, not the exact enforcement mechanism - i use a lot of MIT and Apache licensed code too. i prefer it when ppl are forced to share but sharing still happens without it
i wont go into too much detail cos im still working on a demo but my early vibe is the commons might stand to benefit; i think we’ll be able to use LLMs to clone proprietary software and place it in the commons
@phillmv I disagree and I just wrote about it: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/04/08/ai-code-is-hollowing-out-open-source-and-maintainers-are-looking-the-other-way.html
The idea that people will be able to clone proprietary software and place it into the commons is an interesting idea - except for the fact that the models are very much copying machines - if the proprietary software is built on innovation not already copied by the commons (and models), that clone isn't coming out the other end. That means using your brain.
Besides which, the LLMs aren't going to be cheap forever.
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@phillmv I disagree and I just wrote about it: https://www.quippd.com/writing/2026/04/08/ai-code-is-hollowing-out-open-source-and-maintainers-are-looking-the-other-way.html
The idea that people will be able to clone proprietary software and place it into the commons is an interesting idea - except for the fact that the models are very much copying machines - if the proprietary software is built on innovation not already copied by the commons (and models), that clone isn't coming out the other end. That means using your brain.
Besides which, the LLMs aren't going to be cheap forever.
@yoasif LLMs are actually quite good at disassembling existing software and translating it into new languages.
as of today this still requires a lot of human effort but i feel confident that before LLM innovation peters out we’ll be able to clone most things that expose an API
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@yoasif when Aaron Schwartz crawled all of JSTOR i thought that was cool. my ideal solution here is making all of JSTOR public.
i agree that the current equilibrium where only OpenAI and Anthropic get to copy all of JSTOR is deeply unfair.
@phillmv Aaron at least had an argument that the works he was pirating was based on foundational research funded by the public (owing their existence to them) - he wanted to return it to the public.
What us happening with OpenAI/Anthropic is deeply different - they are taking from people and companies who contributed to the commons (and who wanted it to remain there), and are selling it back to the monied interests.
Sort of a reverse robin hood - stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
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@phillmv Aaron at least had an argument that the works he was pirating was based on foundational research funded by the public (owing their existence to them) - he wanted to return it to the public.
What us happening with OpenAI/Anthropic is deeply different - they are taking from people and companies who contributed to the commons (and who wanted it to remain there), and are selling it back to the monied interests.
Sort of a reverse robin hood - stealing from the poor to give to the rich.
@yoasif yeah i agree - i just think the solution is to do what Aaron was trying to do, not to go back to the status quo
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@yoasif LLMs are actually quite good at disassembling existing software and translating it into new languages.
as of today this still requires a lot of human effort but i feel confident that before LLM innovation peters out we’ll be able to clone most things that expose an API
@phillmv But not really: https://blog.katanaquant.com/p/your-llm-doesnt-write-correct-code
The LLM reproduces code it has copied into its corpus, it is not producing new works based on language semantics.
Monkey see, monkey do.
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@yoasif yeah i agree - i just think the solution is to do what Aaron was trying to do, not to go back to the status quo
@phillmv How is propping up the LLM companies doing what Aaron was trying to do?
Aaron was Robin Hood.
The LLM companies are the opposite.
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@phillmv But not really: https://blog.katanaquant.com/p/your-llm-doesnt-write-correct-code
The LLM reproduces code it has copied into its corpus, it is not producing new works based on language semantics.
Monkey see, monkey do.
@yoasif this article is complaining about a vibe-coded rust port; i don’t think you can vibe code a port of a project as complex as sqlite just yet.
my claim is more like that porting sqlite to rust has gone from a 2 year project to a 3-month project.
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@yoasif this article is complaining about a vibe-coded rust port; i don’t think you can vibe code a port of a project as complex as sqlite just yet.
my claim is more like that porting sqlite to rust has gone from a 2 year project to a 3-month project.
@phillmv When the code is in the corpus, the LLM generates plausible code.
That doesn't mean it is good, or that you can protect it in any way.
If you are saying that, people will be able to describe an app to produce something plausible if the code exists in the corpus... perhaps.
That assumes that people are interested in feeding the models for free - LLMs copy, so if it isn't already a solved problem, you are still going to need to use your brain.
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@yoasif i’m happy to engage on the harms.
broadly speaking i think harms currently outweighs benefits; as of today if i could wish the technology away i think i would. as it is we need to regulate it more.
that said, does how other people use the tool impact the morality of how i use it? i don’t know. i’m not sending people spam.
i don’t really believe in intellectual property so we can skip “theft”.
this mostly leaves us with environmental concerns and social upheaval.
as a programmer it feels hypocritical to wax and wane about automation being inherently bad; automating tasks has been my whole career.
environment is kind of the strongest angle, but that’s downstream of not having clean energy. if you could built it all on wind and solar power then it’d be OK
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