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.

my claim is more like that porting sqlite to rust has gone from a 2 year project to a 3-month project.

Aaron was Robin Hood.

The LLM companies are the opposite.

The LLM reproduces code it has copied into its corpus, it is not producing new works based on language semantics.

Monkey see, monkey do.

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.

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

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.

i agree that the current equilibrium where only OpenAI and Anthropic get to copy all of JSTOR is deeply unfair.

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

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?

@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?

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

the harms obviously outweighed the benefit.

now however it caught up to (some) of the hype: i’m feeling excited about the kinds of projects i’ll be able to deliver with good quality.

@phillmv Quoting you. What is there to talk about after we take all of that into consideration?

PS: I think it is hard to talk about because there's nothing to talk about besides special pleading.

- AI has been very harmful to the open web’s infrastructure
- it’s plain to see that AI has hurt a lot of people’s cognitive and emotional skills
- the dumbest and most evil people alive misuse it constantly
- i don’t really believe in copyright tbh my ideal compromise is we make every academic paper free for everyone not just big tech companies
- so far AI’s externalities outweigh the positives
- the environmental costs are real but overstated; imho can be reduced to “capitalism is bad for the environment and rich people need to be stopped”

claude writes worse code than i do, isn’t very good at debugging, and it produces mid architecture. at least for now.

but in the hands of a skilled practitioner working patiently i feel like we’ve reached a stage where you can deliver much more ambitious projects than were possible before