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AI-powered open-source code laundering

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Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing subverts my defense of human creativity more than the cliched human defenses of AI.

For those of us who exceed the AI, it raises our value enormously. You see it in the pay of the AI engineers. But in the high interest rate world, those of us who continue to be employed, are commanding higher wages, as far as I can tell. It is a culling of the lesser-than. One unfortunate side-effect is the junior engineers who cannot immediately exceed the AI are not being hired as often. But this era echos the dot…

> College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2.

Yeah, the world was a better place when it was mostly white males having that chance.

/s

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#52
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The offending repository is copying files verbatim while removing off the license header from the said files. It's not "standing on the shoulder of giants".

That doesn't even seem like ai but just direct copy pasting lol

looks to me like they are using AI to refactor the code, not to generate it. even if we allow code to be used to train AI to generate new code, copying code and refactoring it is something entirely different.

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#53
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably think they’re one of the “truly intelligent and children/parent of the rich” lol

I would not want the unintelligent and non-rich to go into debt to spend 4 years at a university, getting a degree in a subject which is absurd https://www.sps.nyu.edu/explore/degrees-and-programs/bs-in-h... Please, tell me how going $300k in debt for an undergraduate degree in Tourism Studies benefits society, or the student

Sounds like a US problem tbh

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. You're likely correct that we're witnessing a reconsolidation of wealth and the extinction of the middle class in society, but you seem happy about this? Be careful what you wish for...

Alternatively, all middle class jobs do not require a college degree. Perhaps a college degree is primarily a signalling mechanism for adherence to a bygone era of societal norms. But the price is far too high to justify it, and the market will create alternative proof of societal norms, at a far cheaper price. Which is happening as we debate. My concern now is a large number of under-employed college graduates who a…

If AI and other societal shifts eliminate many white-collar jobs in developed countries, degree-seekers will eventually notice and the demand and perceived value of a college education may greatly diminish. I got my degree at a time when it was actually useful as a signalling mechanism. Now students might not benefit much from a college degree and internships might be hard to find. This is too bad and grossly unfair.

I hope that new societal avenues are created to help young people start their careers, even if those careers are in fields like plumbing, nursing and hospitality. I also hope efforts are made to help white collar workers transition into other (lesser-paying) careers when AI really starts to permanently reduce the size of the white-collar workforce.

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> College should return to being the purview of the truly intelligent and the children of the rich, as it was for all time before WW2. You're likely correct that we're witnessing a reconsolidation of wealth and the extinction of the middle class in society, but you seem happy about this? Be careful what you wish for...

Alternatively, all middle class jobs do not require a college degree. Perhaps a college degree is primarily a signalling mechanism for adherence to a bygone era of societal norms. But the price is far too high to justify it, and the market will create alternative proof of societal norms, at a far cheaper price. Which is happening as we debate. My concern now is a large number of under-employed college graduates who a…

> You need to re-calibrate your ire to the correct target

Who do you think is the correct target? Big institutions? The college system?

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#56
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would not want the unintelligent and non-rich to go into debt to spend 4 years at a university, getting a degree in a subject which is absurd https://www.sps.nyu.edu/explore/degrees-and-programs/bs-in-h... Please, tell me how going $300k in debt for an undergraduate degree in Tourism Studies benefits society, or the student

Sounds like a US problem tbh

Nearly every European university offers a degree in Tourism. The difference is regarding debt. But socializing the cost of a degree in tourism does not mean the cost isn’t born by society. I believe deep in my bones that one can learn the ropes of managing a hotel outside the illustrious grounds of a university

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#58
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like a US problem tbh

Nearly every European university offers a degree in Tourism. The difference is regarding debt. But socializing the cost of a degree in tourism does not mean the cost isn’t born by society. I believe deep in my bones that one can learn the ropes of managing a hotel outside the illustrious grounds of a university

Tbh it just sounds like you don’t value others and others’ work that isn’t a “hard” field.

Sure people can learn hotel management outside of university. But outside of nepotism who will trust random strangers with no qualifications to get their foot in the door?

And you make it sound like socializing the cost of improving outcomes for the next generations as a negative. What is the point if society if not that? Even from a purely selfish perspective, The next generation will take care of me when I am too old to do it myself. I’d want them to be in a good state by then

Do you think you got to wherever you are now without some part of socialized cost of society getting you there?

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#59
post #26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it odd that any LLM could be considered open source. Sure the weights are available to download and use, but you can't reasonably reconstruct the output model as it's impractical for an individual to gather a useful dataset or spend $5,000,000+ of GPU time training.

Distillation can extract the knowledge from an existing model into a newly trained one. That doesn't solve the cost problem, but costs are steadily coming down.

That's still a crude repurposement of an inscrutable artifact. Open source requires you to share the source data from which that artifact (the model parameters) was created.

Re: AI-powered open-source code laundering

#60
post #25

If we step back and examine LLMs more broadly (beyond our personal use cases, beyond "economic impact", beyond the underlying computer science) what we are largely looking at is an emerging means of collaboration. I am not an expert computer scientist, and yet I can "collaborate" (I almost feel bad using this term) with expert computer scientists when my LLM helps me design my particular algorithm. I am not an expert…

> what we are largely looking at is an emerging means of collaboration. They surpass open source, "out-open source-opensouce" by learning skills everywhere and opening them up for anyone who needs them later.

It's owned by a few rich corporations and individuals. It isn't available to anyone - only to those they choose and are ready to pay them. And it isn't open source at all, because open source is not reuse without any obligations (even under permissive licenses). And let's not forget that they 'open' only FOSS works and individual works. They never expose proprietary IP belonging to rich corporations. It isn't an emerging method of collaboration - it's another method for wealth consolidation.
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