Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

John Carmack about open source and anti-AI activists

twitter.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

411–420 of 515 posts

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

#411

Post by Suppafly »

socalgal2 wrote: post #230
rurp wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never publicly scolded someone for doing free work for tech monopolies but I do understand the impulse. The problem is that it's a completely one-sided relationship, and there are perfectly legitimate concerns about how the biggest tech companies are using their wealth and power. At this point I doubt much of anyone would expect a large tech company to go out of its way to lose money in order to support human co…

It not a completely one sided relationship. I'm using google maps for free!!! That's HUGE benefit to me. That google makes money from it is irrelevant to me. They're paying me by providing a free service that I get tons of usage out all the time.

This, I submit photos and corrections to maps all the time, because those photos and corrections help me as well as other people. I derive way more benefit than I personally provide but I'm OK with that and google is too.

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

#412

Post by [deleted] »

SirensOfTitan wrote: post #46

In my mind, AI is making a lot of engineers, including Carmack, seem fairly thoughtless. At the other moments in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization. Tech workers are highly atomized now, and if you have to work to live, you're negotiating on your own. It seems like Carmack, like a lot of tech people, have for…

[deleted]

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

#413

Post by esperent »

sph wrote: post #405
skybrian wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Software engineers have been automating away workers' jobs from the beginning. "Computer" was once a job title. There were armies of switchboard operators at the phone company. Companies had typing pools, mail clerks, and file clerks. We write shell scripts and development tools to automate our own jobs.

Most of us got into engineering for the means (programming computers) rather than the ends (automating away jobs). I guess the people that have been rejoicing from the AI revolution are of the latter type.

Or maybe they find the idea of computers that can think just as exciting as you found programming at the start of your career?

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

#414

Post by qaadika »

FreakyT wrote: post #406
muyuu wrote: post #404

I don't consider myself anti AI at all, but I find relicensing concrete solutions by supposed AI rewrites to be completely callous and an attack on human work. I don't think this can be just dismissed as being against using a particular technology. From my PoV, pretending you can feed outputs, test suites or APIs from existing code and have AI "rewrite it" so you can call it your own is just theft. If instead you wan…

> From my PoV, pretending you can feed outputs, test suites or APIs from existing code and have AI "rewrite it" so you can call it your own is just theft. If you replace “AI” with “a software engineering team”, does that change your argument? It seems like you’re essentially arguing that APIs should be copyrightable, which seems like a Bad Thing to me.

> an attack on human work

A "software engineering team" is human, so that does change the argument. It becomes a human-human problem, not a human-machine problem. Or in OSHA terms, a problem to be solved with administrative controls rather than engineering controls.

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

#415

Post by Atomic_Torrfisk »

skybrian wrote: post #373
SirensOfTitan wrote: post #46

In my mind, AI is making a lot of engineers, including Carmack, seem fairly thoughtless. At the other moments in recent history where technology has displaced workers, labor has either had to fight some very bloody battles or had stronger labor organization. Tech workers are highly atomized now, and if you have to work to live, you're negotiating on your own. It seems like Carmack, like a lot of tech people, have for…

Software engineers have been automating away workers' jobs from the beginning. "Computer" was once a job title. There were armies of switchboard operators at the phone company. Companies had typing pools, mail clerks, and file clerks. We write shell scripts and development tools to automate our own jobs.

Those were electrical engineers, digital switches came out later... regardless we are talking about labor of a much larger industry.

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

#418

Post by Plywood1 »

So, big tech takes the "gift" of passionate developers and: 1. Use them to threaten their jobs (and so many other jobs like lawyers, artists, tech writers...). 2. Hoard hardware, causing prices to raise to absurd levels and effectively making it harder for passionate developers to tinker at home. 3. Set up circular deals between themselves to raise stock prices, creating a bubble that will make 2008 seem like a joke. 4. Close the models and refuse to give credit to anyone or be transparent about training data. 5. Hire cheap labor to label training data in third world countries. 6. Use their models to gather data about the users and profile them, essentially paving the way for mass AI surveillance. 7. Fearmonger about how their models have the potential to wipe the human race. 8. And many other wonderful things.

But hey, we're failing to see how AI is magnifying the value of "our gift". See? Little Timmy can now build a website for his dog with 0 effort just by prompting ChatGPT! Isn't that mind blowing? I don't mind if he's Carmack or fucking Leonardo da Vinci, he's legit stupid.

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

#419

Post by wiseowise »

elteto wrote: post #37
moogly wrote: post #17

[flagged]

Attack the argument not the man. Whether he is set for life or not has nothing to do _in this context_, since, presumably, people who open source their code do not care about profit.

> Whether he is set for life or not has nothing to do _in this context_

Being a millionaire set for life, who doesn’t need to work a day if he wants to, has nothing to do _in this_ context of AI companies siphoning away all the open source code, profiting off it, and then threatening to automate away at least one cell of white collar jobs and potentially others too. Hmm.

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

#420

Post by wiseowise »

elteto wrote: post #154
jraph wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> presumably, people who open source their code do not care about profit That's not true. There are business models around open source, and many companies making money from open source work. (I'm only reacting to this specific part of your comment)

I think you are splitting hairs. Yes those models “exist”, if by exist you mean they have dual-licensing setups with different tiers (community, professional, etc). The point is that most individuals who open source their code do so without expecting financial returns from it. In that context, whether Carmack has a $1 or $1e9 doesn’t make a difference.

> The point is that most individuals who open source their code do so without expecting financial returns from it. In that context, whether Carmack has a $1 or $1e9 doesn’t make a difference.

Bruh, there are thousands of projects, maybe tens of thousands, that survive solely on donations, hundreds thousands written by hungry students trying to land their first gig. Maybe you’re right in “free as in beer” sense, but you’re certainly, majorly wrong in general OSS definition.

Post reply on HN