That AI was trained on the GPLv2 Linux source code, which does have a driver for your Wi-Fi.
How is this not copyright laundering?
FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
21–30 of 397 posts
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#22I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.
Maybe one day, but it doesn't look like we are very close yet. From the OP article, they handed it the working linux driver and asked it to just make this FreeBSD compatible, but it could not. Looks like it took OP a significant amount of work over 2 months to get something that seems to work. What is interesting is it seems like the work resembles regular management, asking for a written specification, proof reading…
Aka, the hard part.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#23It'd be nice to have drivers for newer Mac's for a better Asahi Linux experience. Good use of AI imo.
AI wouldn't work here. The OP task was converting one open source driver in to another one for FreeBSD. Since Mac doesn't have open source drivers to start with, a person still has to do the ground research. At least until you can somehow give the AI the ability to fully interact with the computer at the lowest levels and observe hardware connected to it.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#24I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.
The primary reason why it worked is because Claude could rip off the Linux driver. Without any prior work to rely on, how will the AI figure out proprietary hardware?
I haven't read the article but my first question was, install wifibox?
It's a bhyve VM running alpine Linux and you pass through your WiFi adaptor and get a bridge out on the freebsd host.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#25It'd be nice to have drivers for newer Mac's for a better Asahi Linux experience. Good use of AI imo.
This is like complaining Delorean didn't make spare parts for your homemade time machine.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#26This is really neat, I'm glad it worked.
This is atrocious C code.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#27I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.
Hardware driver bugs frequently manifest as concurrency flakiness or heisenbugs.
AI is notoriously bad at dealing with bugs that only cause problems every few weeks.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#28I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.
> We're very close to just being about to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. That sounds quite naive and it isn't that simple. Even the author expressed caution and isn't sure about how robust the driver is since he hasn't seen the code himself nor does he know if it works reliably. Even entertaining the idea, someone would have already have replaced those closed source Nvidia drivers that h…
> We're very close to just being about to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything.
This is false. To "brute force" a driver, you'd need a feedback loop between the hardware's output and the driver's input.
While, in theory, this is possible for some analog-digital traducers (e.g WI-FI radio), if the hardware is a human-interface system (joystick, monitor, mouse, speaker, etc.) you literally need a "human in the loop" to provide feedback.
Additionally, many edge-cases in driving hardware can irrevocably destroy it and even a domain-specific agent wouldn't have any physics context for the underlying risks.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#29Software is still eating the world, now even faster. I wonder how soon we will adapt to this new situation where software is vibe coded for anything and make use of this software without caution as expressed in the article. For most people the main difference will be: Will it run and solve my problem? Soon we will see malware being put into vibe coded software - who will wants to check every commit for write-only sof…
I think in the future (in 10 years?) we are going to see a lot of disposable/throwaway software. I don’t know, imagine this: I need to buy tickets for a concert. I ask my AI agent that I want tickets. The agent creates code on the fly and uses it to purchase my tickets. The code could be simple curl command, or a full app with nice ui/ux. As a user I don’t need to see the code.
If I want to buy more tickets the same day, the ai agent will likely reuse the same code. But if i buy tickets again in one year, the agent will likely rebuild the code to adjust to the new API version the ticket company now offers. Seems wasteful but it’s more dynamic. Vendors only need to provide raw APIs and your agent can create the ui experience you want. In that regard nobody but the company that owns your agent can inject malware into the software you use. Some software will last more than others (e.g., the music player your agent provided won’t probably be rebuilt unless you want a new look and feel or extra functionality). I think we’ll adopt the “cattle, not pets” approach to software too.
Re: FreeBSD doesn't have Wi-Fi driver for my old MacBook, so AI built one for me
#30I feel like ubiquitous hardware support in every OS is going to be a solved problem soon. We're very close to just being able to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. The hardware designer would have to go well out of their way to obfuscate the interface if they really wanted to forbid it, instead of just not bothering to support an OS like BSD or Linux.
> We're very close to just being about to set an AI coding agent to brute-force a driver for anything. That sounds quite naive and it isn't that simple. Even the author expressed caution and isn't sure about how robust the driver is since he hasn't seen the code himself nor does he know if it works reliably. Even entertaining the idea, someone would have already have replaced those closed source Nvidia drivers that h…
someone would have already have replaced those closed source Nvidia drivers that have firmware blobs
This isn’t quite a fair example, these are so massively complex with code path built explicitly for so many individual applications. Nvidia cards are nearly a complete SoC.
Though then again, coding agents 1 year ago of the full autonomous sort were barely months old, and now here we are in one year. So, maybe soon this could be realistic? Hard to say. Even if code agents can do it, it still costs $ via tokens and api calls. But a year ago it would have cost me at least a few dollars and a lot more time to do things I get done now in a prompt and 10 minutes of Opus in a sandbox.