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John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

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Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#101

Post by skeledrew »

I said it just recently[0] and I'll say it again: those who're big on open source (or at least copyleft) should be jumping hard on the AI opportunity. The core purpose of copyleft is to ensure the freedom of users to do whatever they want with the covered works, chained ad infinitum. Letting AI at said works (and more) now means even more freedom, as now users can trivially (compared to previously) update that code to fit their use case more precisely, or port it to another language, or whatever.

I really can't see a valid reason to be against it, beyond something related to profiting in some way by restricting access, which - I would think - is the antithesis of copyleft/permissively licensed open source.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47259850

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#102

Post by CamperBob2 »

GeoAtreides wrote: post #96
CamperBob2 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one cares. Copyright in general is done, and we are all stronger now. Don't fight AI, fight for open models.

there are no open models. none. zero. there are binary files that some companies are allowing you to download, for now. it was called shareware in the old days. one day the tap will close and we'll see then what open models really means

Not true; e.g. https://allenai.org/open-models .

For my own purposes, open weights are 95% as good, to be honest. I understand that not everyone will agree with that. As long as training takes hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of somebody else's compute, we're always going to be at the big companies' mercy to some extent.

At some point they will start to restrict access, as you suggest, and that's the point where the righteous indignation displayed by the neo-Luddites will be necessary and helpful. What I advocate is simply to save up enough outrage for that battle. Don't waste your passion defending legacy copyright interests.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#104

Post by sumeno »

bombcar wrote: post #47
OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote: post #4

I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it. In his follow-up post he talks about him open sourcing old games as a gift, and he doesn't much care how people receive that gift, just that they do. He doesn't acknowledge that Anthropic, OpenAI, etc, are profiting while the original authors are not. The original authors…

> I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it. He says it's a gift, and if people do whatever, he doesn't care; he already gave it away . I think it's interesting that nobody would cry that Fabien should shovel cash from his book sales towards Carmack, nor should those who learned how to code by reading source owe so…

> He says it's a gift, and if people do whatever, he doesn't care; he already gave it away.

That's his choice and I assume he licensed his code accordingly. That doesn't mean that the choices of others who used different licenses are invalid.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#105

Post by dahrkael »

sublinear wrote: post #7
OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote: post #4

I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it. In his follow-up post he talks about him open sourcing old games as a gift, and he doesn't much care how people receive that gift, just that they do. He doesn't acknowledge that Anthropic, OpenAI, etc, are profiting while the original authors are not. The original authors…

It's not even the profit, but that there is often no new code being contributed. AI provides an offramp for people to disengage from social coding. People don't see the point because they still don't understand the difference between barely getting something to work and meaningfully improving that thing with new ideas.

if no code is contributed back then why is there an ongoing problem with massive amounts of PRs?

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#106

Post by j-bos »

tw04 wrote: post #89
j-bos wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's rhymes with people getting mad about pharmacos charging outrageous prices for life saving drugs they developed in order to charge outrageous prices. In both cases (drugs and OSS) it's an ugly process that produces great and greatly uneven value to humanity, but the alternatives are less value overall, even to those on the losing side of the uneven value.

>it's an ugly process that produces great and greatly uneven value to humanity That'd be far more believable if it weren't for the fact a vast majority of the research is publicly funded for those drug companies. They have no issues selling their drugs for less money in other markets while still turning a profit. And there's absolutely no indication they'd cease to exist with just outrageous profits, not "crippling e…

So I agree with you in that it's ugly, and they do take the lion's share of benefit from public research. That said, the public research doesn't run human trials, scale up, or QC production. Still ugly, still valuable.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#107

Post by pseudalopex »

Aurornis wrote: post #83
john_strinlai wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What makes this more objectionable than profiting off open source projects by using it directly? i can brag if netflix is using my X or facebook runs all their stuff with my Y. that can help me land consulting gigs, solicit donations, etc.

This is an edge case in OSS. Even among software packages used by Netflix and Amazon, few of them were attributable to a single maintainer or small group of individuals. They've long since become community developed projects.

Netflix and Amazon use many packages of all sizes. And contributions to projects with many contributors helped people get jobs.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#108

Post by arjie »

Has anyone else noticed a cultural shift around monetization of output? I think there wasn't as much back when I first started using open-source programs, both as a user, and a small-time contributor for decades now. And I've noticed this on other things too. A short while ago, someone on Reddit pointed out that something on Google Maps was wrong and so I went and submitted a fix and told them how to and I received a barrage of comments about working for free for a corporation that's making money off me.

I think if people want a revshare on things then perhaps they should release under a revshare license. Providing things under open licenses and then pulling a bait-and-switch saying "oh the license isn't actually that you're not supposed to be doing that" doesn't sit right with me. Just be upfront and open with things.

The point of the Free Software licenses is that you can go profit off the software, you just have certain obligations back. I think those are pretty good standards. And, in fact, given the tendency towards The Revshare License that everyone seems to learn towards, I think that coming up with the GPL or MIT must have taken some exceptional people. Good for them.

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#109

Post by Jare »

toast0 wrote: post #24
OSaMaBiNLoGiN wrote: post #4

I think one of the more prominent issues folks take with mass training on OSS is that the companies doing it are now profiting for having done it. In his follow-up post he talks about him open sourcing old games as a gift, and he doesn't much care how people receive that gift, just that they do. He doesn't acknowledge that Anthropic, OpenAI, etc, are profiting while the original authors are not. The original authors…

I'm no Carmack, but everything I've released as open source is a gift with no strings (unless it was to a project with a restrictive license). A gift with strings isn't exactly a gift. If you take my gift and profit, it doesn't hurt me, there were no strings. Your users presumably benefit from the software I wrote, unless you're using it for evil, but I don't have enough clout to use an only IBM may use it for evil l…

I'm the same, I've seen some of my stuff pop up in the weirdest places and I was ok with it. But I understand and respect that people who published code under restrictive licenses may have a problem. The GPL is absolutely "NOT-a-free-gift" license, in both wording and spirit.

If someone published something as MIT and doesn't like it being used for LLM training, yeah that person can only blame themselves.

For GPL, it all depends if you consider a LLM "derivative software" of the GPL code it was trained on. It's fair to have an opinion on that either way, but I don't think it's fair to treat that opinion as the obvious truth. The same applies to art, a lot of it is visible on the Internet but that doesn't make it "a gift".

Re: John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

#110

Post by pseudalopex »

truncate wrote: post #40
evrimoztamur wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a major difference between open-sourcing a completed product versus being an open source maintainer, and I'm disappointed that Carmack is drawing a false equivalence here.

Plus unless I'm wrong he's talking about products that were released several years ago and milked for money already.

You were not wrong.
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