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Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

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11–20 of 38 posts

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#11
post #8

A lot of companies avoid using GPL code at all, because they don't want to even accidentally find their own proprietary code subject to being released under the GPL. I can imagine that some similar licensing concept could be applied to copyrightable works with respect to AI training. Use a legally restricted work for AI training, and your entire AI training set is subject to free public release?

i don't think anyone training AI models cares about any of that right now

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#12

I think this is the wrong question. The question assumes that AI is a derivative to your code. The reality is that there will come a day, sooner than you like, when the AI can replicate the application you wrote without your code. In that world, what does it matter what code is open vs closed?

i think we are a very long way from that, there is no "intelligence", just advanced interpolation

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#13
post #2

> with the rise of AI and inability to enforce licenses or control whether code is used for training. The inability to precisely enforce license abuse has always been a problem with Open-Sourcing your code. I don't understand how someone would see AI as a dealbreaker in the real-world of Open Source pragmatism.

the open source licenses are not provided along with the AI generated code, AFAIK

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#14
post #3

You aren't going to have a choice - anything you make available on the web will be consumed by AI regardless of the license. That is essentially going to be the primary purpose of the web going forward, to provide training data for AI.

I wonder what this means for SEO. If someone develops content and someone else then generates very similar content using AI, how do the search engines know who to rank higher?

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#15
post #13
post #2

> with the rise of AI and inability to enforce licenses or control whether code is used for training. The inability to precisely enforce license abuse has always been a problem with Open-Sourcing your code. I don't understand how someone would see AI as a dealbreaker in the real-world of Open Source pragmatism.

the open source licenses are not provided along with the AI generated code, AFAIK

They're not included when Tesla ships them illegally either: https://sfconservancy.org/blog/2018/may/18/tesla-incomplete-...

Even when they were called out on it, it took them years to respond. And this was before LLMs; even then we knew that releasing things under Open Source is mostly a good-faith social contract.

These "is it still okay to x because AI exists" questions are besides the point. If you weren't considering the worst-case scenario outcome of your actions already then maybe you should. If AI forces your hand, so be it. But you can always Open Source your code, as long as you've accepted the same risks that existed for the past 20-30 years.

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#17
post #14
post #3

You aren't going to have a choice - anything you make available on the web will be consumed by AI regardless of the license. That is essentially going to be the primary purpose of the web going forward, to provide training data for AI.

I wonder what this means for SEO. If someone develops content and someone else then generates very similar content using AI, how do the search engines know who to rank higher?

I suspect both SEO and search engines as a concept will be made obsolete. SEO doesn't even make sense when machines are creating the content and consuming it. AI is going to be the primary UI for software applications in general, so you won't even really use a browser, you'll talk to an AI (probably directly integrated with your OS) and it will generate content or dynamic applications on the fly - you won't ever even interact with the web directly, much less with human-created content.

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#18
post #17
post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what this means for SEO. If someone develops content and someone else then generates very similar content using AI, how do the search engines know who to rank higher?

I suspect both SEO and search engines as a concept will be made obsolete. SEO doesn't even make sense when machines are creating the content and consuming it. AI is going to be the primary UI for software applications in general, so you won't even really use a browser, you'll talk to an AI (probably directly integrated with your OS) and it will generate content or dynamic applications on the fly - you won't ever even…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#19
post #14
post #3

You aren't going to have a choice - anything you make available on the web will be consumed by AI regardless of the license. That is essentially going to be the primary purpose of the web going forward, to provide training data for AI.

I wonder what this means for SEO. If someone develops content and someone else then generates very similar content using AI, how do the search engines know who to rank higher?

Everything evolves. The internet existed before the web, and we navigated its content. The web existed before search engines did, and we navigated its content. Content and ways to navigate it will continue to exist once search engines are no longer relevant. Maybe SEO simply doesn't matter?

Re: Ask HN: Is open sourcing your code still an option with the rise of AI?

#20
post #8

A lot of companies avoid using GPL code at all, because they don't want to even accidentally find their own proprietary code subject to being released under the GPL. I can imagine that some similar licensing concept could be applied to copyrightable works with respect to AI training. Use a legally restricted work for AI training, and your entire AI training set is subject to free public release?

No such licensing concept could work. The AI companies' argument is that what they're doing counts as fair use, so they don't need to abide by any license. If that argument is true, then such a thing wouldn't do anything, and if it's false, then such a thing is unnecessary, because they're already violating even the most lax licenses (e.g., MIT) by failing to provide the required attribution.

Can't one just literally say that AI is not allowed? It's not fair use when you're going directly against the license.
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