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Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

antirez.com

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Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#141

Post by matthewmacleod »

serf wrote: post #33
dom96 wrote: post #2

> As a programmer, I want to write more open source than ever, now. I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? We've already seen some pretty strong evidence of this with Tailwind.

I don't understand the mindset because I began my foray into open source exactly because I wanted to distribute and share my code. in other words, i've never been in the position that I felt my charitable givings anywhere were ever stolen . Some people write code and put it out there without caveats. Some people jump into open source to be license warriors. Not me. I just write code and share it. If youre a person, g…

Do you really struggle to understand the mindset?

Some people are happy to release code openly and have it used for anything, commercial or otherwise. Totally understandable and a valid choice to make.

Other people are happy to release code openly so long as people who incorporate it into their projects also release it in the same way. Again, totally understandable and valid.

None of this is hard to understand or confusing or even slightly weird.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#142

Post by martin-t »

luke5441 wrote: post #29
RadiozRadioz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel similarly for a different reason. I put my code out there, licensed under the GPL. It is now, through a layer of indirection, being used to construct products that are not under the GPL. That's not what I signed up for. I know the GPL didn't have a specific clause for AI, and the jury is still out on this specific case (how similar is it to a human doing the same thing?), but I like to imagine, had it been mad…

GPL works via copyright. Since AI companies claim fair use no copyright applies. There is no fixing this. The only option is not to publish. There are non-US jurisdictions where you have some options, but since most of them are trained in the US that won't help much.

I recall a basics of law class saying that in some countries (e.g. Czech Republic), open source contributors have the right to small compensation if their work is used to a large financial benefit.

At some point, I'll have to look it up because if that's right, the billionaires and wannabe-trillionaires owe me a shitton of money.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#143

Post by embedding-shape »

gus_massa wrote: post #115
embedding-shape wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I want to write less, just knowing that LLM models are going to be trained on my code is making me feel more strongly than ever that my open source contributions will simply be stolen. Am I wrong to feel this? Is anyone else concerned about this? I don't think it's wrong, but misdirected maybe. What do you that someone can "steal" your open source contributions? I've always released most of my code as "open source"…

[A]GPL is viral, so the derived code must use the same license. People that like that license care a lot about that. On the other side BSD0 is just a polite version of WTFPL, and people that like it doesn't care about what you do with the code.

And I mostly use MIT, which requires attribution. Does that mean when people use my code, without attribution me, that they're "stealing my code"? I would never call it that, I'd say they're "breaking the license", or similar.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#144

Post by JackSlateur »

edg5000 wrote: post #82
gentooflux wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a zero sum game. AI cannot innovate, it can only predictively generate code based on what it's already seen. If we get to a point where new code is mostly or only written by AI, nothing new emerges. No new libraries, no new techniques, no new approaches. Fewer and fewer real developers means less and less new code.

Nonsense indeed. The model knowledge is the current state of the art. Any computation it does, advances it. It re-ingests work of prior agents every time you run it on your codebase, so even though the model initializes the same way (until they update the model), upon repeated calls it ingests more and more novel information, inching the state of the art ever forwards.

Current state of the art ? You must be joking .. I see code it has generated, some interns does better.

Obviously, you are also joking about the thing that AI is immune to consanguinity, right ?

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#145

Post by artdigital »

edg5000 wrote: post #98

> state of the art LLMs are able to complete large subtasks or medium size projects alone, almost unassisted, given a good set of hints about what the end result should be No. I agree with the author, but it's hyperbolic of him to phrase it like this. If you have solid domain knowledge, you'll steer the model with detailed specs. It will carry those out competently and multiply your productivity. However, the quality…

Yes that’s how I see it too. It’s a productivity multiplier, but depends on what you put in.

Sure Opus can work fully on its own by just telling it “add a button that does X”, but do that 20 times and the good turns into mush. Steer the model with detailed tech specs on the other hand, and the output becomes magical

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#146

Post by zahlman »

senko wrote: post #57

The anti-AI hype, in the context of software development, seems to focus on a few things: > AI code is slop, therefore you shouldn't use it You should learn how to responsibly use it as a tool, not a replacement for you. This can be done, people are doing it, people like Salvatore (antirez), Mitchell (of Terraform/Ghostty fame), Simon (swillison) and many others are publicly talking about it. > AI can't code XYZ It's…

> at least three quarters are boring boilerplate. And making that part interesting is one of the worst things you can do in software development! That path lies resume-driven development, architecture astronautics, abusing design patterns du jour, and other sins that will make code maintenance on that thing a nightmare!

You apparently see "making the boilerplate interesting" as doing a bunch of overengineering. Strange. To my mind, the overengineering is part of the boilerplate. "Making the boilerplate interesting" in my mind is not possible; but rather the goal is to fix the system such that it doesn't require boilerplate any more. (Sometimes that just means a different implementation language.)

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#147

Post by Ekaros »

CuriouslyC wrote: post #69
phtrivier wrote: post #22

How would we measure the effects of AI coding tool taking over manual coding ? Would we see an increase in the number of GitHub projects ? In the number of stars (given the ai is so good) ? In the number of start up ipos (surely if all your engineers are 1000x engineers thanks to Claude code, we'll have plenty of googles and Amazons to invest in) ? In the price of software (if I can just vibe code everything, than a…

Plot twist: the bottleneck when you have a development force multiplier is __MARKETING__. If you develop at 10X the rate, you still have to grind/growth marketing. Unmarketed products might as well not exist, even if they're fantastic. Github stars? That's 100% marketing. Shit that clears a low quality bar can rack up stars like crazy just by being well marketed. Number of startups? That's 100% marketing. Investors p…

Someone should really take AI to these task. Let the agents run wild. Let them astroturf every possible platform in existence. Especially like this one here HN. Insert marketing messages to every post and every thread.

There is not bad publicity. More you spam more you will be noticed. Human attention is limited. So grab as much as you can. And also this helps your product name to get into training data and thus later in LLM outputs.

Even more ideas. When you find an email address. Spam that too. Get your message out multiple times to each address.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#148

Post by embedding-shape »

dist-epoch wrote: post #130
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

It's just a reiteration of the age-old conflict in arts: - making art as you thing it should be, but at the risk of it being non-commercial - getting paid for doing commercial/trendy art choose one

Yeah, but I guess wider. It's like the discussion would turn into "Don't use oil colors, then you don't get to do the fun process of mixing water and color together to get it just perfect" while maybe some artists don't think that's the fun process, and all the other categories, all mixed together, and everyone think their reason of doing it is the reason most people do it.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#149

Post by loubbrad »

embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> I think there is a section of programmer who actually do like the actual typing of letters, numbers and special characters into a computer...

Reminds me of this excerpt from Richard Hamming's book:

> Finally, a more complete, and more useful, Symbolic Assembly Program (SAP) was devised—after more years than you are apt to believe during which most programmers continued their heroic absolute binary programming. At the time SAP first appeared I would guess about 1% of the older programmers were interested in it—using SAP was “sissy stuff”, and a real programmer would not stoop to wasting machine capacity to do the assembly. Yes! Programmers wanted no part of it, though when pressed they had to admit their old methods used more machine time in locating and fixing up errors than the SAP program ever used. One of the main complaints was when using a symbolic system you do not know where anything was in storage—though in the early days we supplied a mapping of symbolic to actual storage, and believe it or not they later lovingly pored over such sheets rather than realize they did not need to know that information if they stuck to operating within the system—no! When correcting errors they preferred to do it in absolute binary addresses.

Re: Don't fall into the anti-AI hype

#150

Post by svara »

martin-t wrote: post #120
embedding-shape wrote: post #95

> But what was the fire inside you, when you coded till night to see your project working? It was building. I feel like this is not the same for everyone. For some people, the "fire" is literally about "I control a computer", for others "I'm solving a problem for others", and yet for others "I made something that made others smile/cry/feel emotions" and so on. I think there is a section of programmer who actually do…

> programmer who actually do like the actual typing It's not about the typing, it's about the understanding. LLM coding is like reading a math textbook without trying to solve any of the problems. You get an overview, you get a sense of what it's about and most importantly you get a false sense of understanding. But if you try to actually solve the problems, you engage completely different parts of your brain. It's a…

We've been hearing this a lot, but I don't really get it. A lot of code, most probably, isn't even close to being as challenging as a maths textbook.

It obviously depends a lot on what exactly you're building, but in many projects programming entails a lot of low intellectual effort, repetitive work.

It's the same things over and over with slight variations and little intellectual challenge once you've learnt the basic concepts.

Many projects do have a kernel of non-obvious innovation, some have a lot of it, and by all means, do think deeply about these parts. That's your job.

But if an LLM can do the clerical work for you? What's not to celebrate about that?

To make it concrete with an example: the other day I had Claude make a TUI for a data processing library I made. It's a bunch of rather tedious boilerplate.

I really have no intellectual interest in TUI coding and I would consider doing that myself a terrible use of my time considering all the other things I could be doing.

The alternative wasn't to have a much better TUI, but to not have any.

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