Hetare King

I don’t think this is going to amount to anything; the rate he’s popping these out suggest he’s more motivated by making a point and/or prestige than getting something useful at the end, and turning these enormous codebases nobody has any intuition for into something maintainable is going to be grueling work that will make them wish they started from scratch. But if we imagine that this will go somewhere:

Wouldn’t that be bad for open source in the long run?

Businesses, certainly not the larger ones, are not going to touch this for various reasons. So while Adobe and Microsoft may take a hit, it’s not going to fundamentally harm their business models. Students, on the other hand, can’t afford the real thing. If that leads to them to alternatives like LibreOffice, GIMP, or Krita, then when they end up in the workforce, there’s going to be at least some pressure to let them use the tools they’re used to. In fact, I use LibreOffice at work. But if they can have something that looks and feels exactly like Adobe’s and Microsoft’s products, they’ll feel right at home with the real thing at work.

It only appears dogmatic to someone under the mistaken impression that technologies are value-neutral. Make no mistake: even if every generative AI model were open-source and you could run on your own hardware, it would still be a technology that empowers the already advantaged far more than anyone else.

It doesn’t matter what the reason for its creation is, you can make similar arguments about laws against assault and murder or the right to vote, what matters is what it’s doing in the current legal situation.

If you think that the end of copyright will suddenly render corporations powerless, you are beyond naive. Some will fail to adapt, undoubtedly, but many will not just adapt, they’ll be able to take full advantage of this new situation. Copyright isn’t the only mechanism they can dig a moat with, and as long as the economic incentives remain what they are, they will find a way and be no less exploitative. Meanwhile, the individual creator or indeed projects like Linux will lose what little protections they have and be completely at the mercy of these monsters. Forget exploitative contracts, they can just exploit you without one!

A better world without copyright is possible, it just doesn’t look exactly like this world, except without copyright. The abolishment of copyright is not an ideal, it’s a means to an end. But for those means to lead to a good end, how and when it happens matters. To cheer on a development because it nominally achieves what you believe is needed to lead to your ideal outcome, even when the way it happens would lead to an outcome that is in direct opposition of the ideals that lead to that belief in the first place, is a sign you’ve stopped thinking.

You do realise that even if copyright were abolished, large, powerful corporations would continue to exist and even manage to use the absence of copyright to their advantage?

Without the GPL being enforced, a company like Microsoft could finally start digging a moat around Linux without constraints.

The thing is, if all other things remain the same, an absence of copyright will also be used by the wealthy and powerful to further enrich and empower themselves and as a tool of oppression.

From the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition:

#34 War is good for business.

#35 Peace is good for business.

You cannot have internally consistent, principled view on copyright without also having a compatible view on the economy. And even then, the economy needs to come first; you cannot start destroying load-bearing pillars, no matter how ugly, without first getting everyone out of the house.

The tool in itself can really be usefull when well used. Many people use it and get nice results.

The way I see it, there are two kinds of people: those to whom AI is utterly useless because it just ends up taking more time and have them burn through their cognitive endurance faster, and those to whom it would be irresponsible to let them use it, because it would prevent them from finding better solutions for the busywork they’re letting the AI do, and they just end up creating a lot of needless maintenance overhead.

But more importantly, being “useful” to certain individuals is not the same as being good for society. Which brings us back to it undermining licenses like the GPL, which would further enrich and empower the already advantaged.

Also, I can’t find any example in history of a technology that was successfully banned despite being usefull.

CFCs? Asbestos? The bans on them aren’t perfectly enforced, but nevertheless, the hole in the ozone layer is shrinking and the number of people dying of asbestos-related lung cancer is reducing, so they do have value.

The strict “no-AI” movement has already lost its battle

Even if it were true, that would be no reason to stop trying or to stop saying the truth: No matter useful you experience it as being, you are causing harm. To yourself, to the field, to society.

It won’t exactly be able to accomplish anything like that if it’s been undermined no matter what the mechanism of its enforcement is.

Analogies are comparisons of structure, not intensity. There are a lot of things that are “not as bad” as child labour, that doesn’t make them OK.

But i don’t believe in copyright laws either. Do you believe in the goals of the GPL? Because you have to admit, the way AI works, regardless of whether you frame it as “theft” or “copyright infringement” or not, is at odds with those goals.

GPL may call itself “copyleft”, but legally it is dependent on copyright to be enforceable. In the first place, the whole point of licenses like GPL is to ensure that when people take from the commons, they also give back to the commons. The way AI gains its ability to generate shitty code undermines this, and so is ideologically very much at odds with Linux and the wider FOSS world.