Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it toLLMs: (enable that)Free software people: Oh no not like that
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if i am honest the price of such, psychotic breaks, isn't worth the freedom of per request billing
@mjg59 it is a fair criticism of free software that they haven't managed to meaningfully increase people's agency over the computer
but it is a flight of fancy to suggest that extractive labor and outsourcing gives people that agency or control
even before we get to the "software that kills teenagers" part of the faustian pact
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@mjg59 and yeah, “not like that” is actually valid, it’s just “having standards”, when “like that” is plagiaristic and error-prone and unsustainable and ecologically damaging on a world-historic scale. you don’t have to cancel every ethical principle you have so you can make a button a color you like better, even if you don’t really know how to code. you can argue that this ethical calculus is *wrong* but it is very silly indeed to pretend it’s contradictory gibberish
@glyph I think I've covered why the plagiarism bit feels less true to me for code than for other fields, and I don't think the error prone aspect of it matters for the cases I'm thinking of. The world burning and economic destruction and loss of human skills are certainly a consequence of how these things are currently deployed but it's not inherent (at least, not to anywhere near this scale), and having it be an immediate "no" rather than "Is there an ethical way to do this" feels rough
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@glyph I think I've covered why the plagiarism bit feels less true to me for code than for other fields, and I don't think the error prone aspect of it matters for the cases I'm thinking of. The world burning and economic destruction and loss of human skills are certainly a consequence of how these things are currently deployed but it's not inherent (at least, not to anywhere near this scale), and having it be an immediate "no" rather than "Is there an ethical way to do this" feels rough
@mjg59 it sounds unconvincing to me. the plagiarism thing has to do with sustainability, not just aesthetics. software errors tend to be chaotic and compounding and thus you’d need strong edges to the sandbox where the agents were allowed to play, which we don’t have. and the “inherent”-ness is a red herring. it doesn’t matter if there’s a *pretend* version of this tech that is ethical, the real-life version we have has the problems it has, and I haven’t heard any plausible way to separate them
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@mjg59 it sounds unconvincing to me. the plagiarism thing has to do with sustainability, not just aesthetics. software errors tend to be chaotic and compounding and thus you’d need strong edges to the sandbox where the agents were allowed to play, which we don’t have. and the “inherent”-ness is a red herring. it doesn’t matter if there’s a *pretend* version of this tech that is ethical, the real-life version we have has the problems it has, and I haven’t heard any plausible way to separate them
@mjg59 but most of all you seem to be doing cartesian dualism here, where the “real” creativity is in the “system” not the “code”. but you can do that with prose, too? the sentences are mere words, nothing wrong with copying a word. no way to make someone weep with a punctuation mark, it’s the story where the creativity lies, not the words. and… sure? but there’s no transcendental essence outside of the mundane material components in either case
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@mjg59 but most of all you seem to be doing cartesian dualism here, where the “real” creativity is in the “system” not the “code”. but you can do that with prose, too? the sentences are mere words, nothing wrong with copying a word. no way to make someone weep with a punctuation mark, it’s the story where the creativity lies, not the words. and… sure? but there’s no transcendental essence outside of the mundane material components in either case
@glyph I understand your point and to me it does feel like there's a real difference that I'm not expressing terribly well. Words have a meaningful impact on how the story lands, and that just doesn't feel true for most code? In general I want code that clearly communicates the functional goal, not code that seeks to accentuate that through style.
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@glyph I understand your point and to me it does feel like there's a real difference that I'm not expressing terribly well. Words have a meaningful impact on how the story lands, and that just doesn't feel true for most code? In general I want code that clearly communicates the functional goal, not code that seeks to accentuate that through style.
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@mjg59 @glyph Anyway I've only been tangentially following this argument, but "code and prose are just different" has never held much water for me. They're not different and also you need both. Nor does the idea that LLMs are worse at one than the other, they're terrible at both.
It strikes me as the same old fallacy: "The most enthusiastic bitcoin and blockchain proponents are the ones who understand neither databases nor economics."
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@mjg59 @glyph Anyway I've only been tangentially following this argument, but "code and prose are just different" has never held much water for me. They're not different and also you need both. Nor does the idea that LLMs are worse at one than the other, they're terrible at both.
It strikes me as the same old fallacy: "The most enthusiastic bitcoin and blockchain proponents are the ones who understand neither databases nor economics."
@jwz @mjg59 @glyph I hang out with three guys who use AI.
Guy 1 works at a rocket company and says he'd never use AI to design the part he works on, but uses it for little bits of code. Guy 2 works for a social media company and won't use AI for code, but uses it to write email reports to VPs. Guy 3 works at Microsoft and says AI is great as long as you don't use copilot.
They all think AI is good at stuff they don't understand and sucks at things they do.
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@jwz @mjg59 @glyph I hang out with three guys who use AI.
Guy 1 works at a rocket company and says he'd never use AI to design the part he works on, but uses it for little bits of code. Guy 2 works for a social media company and won't use AI for code, but uses it to write email reports to VPs. Guy 3 works at Microsoft and says AI is great as long as you don't use copilot.
They all think AI is good at stuff they don't understand and sucks at things they do.
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