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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

#501

Post by make3 »

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…

why is someone making money out of it a bad thing, if they're not preventing other people from using the code?

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

#502

Post by whattheheckheck »

vrganj wrote: post #451
bcrosby95 wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Avoiding every corporation that does stuff you disagree with just isn't feasible. All we can do is weigh their business model and other practices with the value we get out of it. People on Reddit who also have a problem with Reddit are obviously on Reddit. That is tautological. It doesn't mean they aren't avoiding other companies for similar reasons, which wouldn't make them a hypocrite either.

No ethical consumption under capitalism

So what is the implied call to action there? What's actually the solution?

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

#503

Post by supern0va »

yndoendo wrote: post #462
supern0va wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. I've noticed this thing where people who have decided they are strongly "anti-AI" will just parrot talking points without really thinking them through, and this is a common one. Someone made this argument to me recently, but when probed, they were also against open weight…

I am anti-AI art and will never fund any thing created from AI-art. It lacks emotion. It only can copy and attempt to duplicate existing art. The time taken to make art is therapeutic to the artist and is expressed in their end product. It helps them keep balance in their lives, calm them, and fight depression. Everything I have seen from AI-art is dis-formed from reality. AI-art will enhance body dis-morphia in the…

>I am anti-AI art and will never fund any thing created from AI-art. It lacks emotion. It only can copy and attempt to duplicate existing art.

Sure, but there's a difference between being anti-AI in X use case, and anti-AI across the board. I see you didn't mention LLMs here, which are the biggest AI use case right now.

That said, a competent artist can produce cool collaborative works with AI image models. Folks have won art competitions using these tools. As AI image models like Nano Banana get more adept at manipulating images, it's likely to become yet another tool like Photoshop for human expression. That said, I don't think people one-shotting fully synthetic images is really artistic expression, so I agree with that much.

>Everything I have seen from AI-art is dis-formed from reality. AI-art will enhance body dis-morphia in the younger generation the more real looking it gets.

Is this...new? The advertising industry mastered this long before AI. We probably needed regulation back then, too. I'm not sure why AI is special here.

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

#504

Post by vrganj »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #502
vrganj wrote: post #451

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No ethical consumption under capitalism

So what is the implied call to action there? What's actually the solution?

You asking me? The solution is a workers revolution and a restructuring of the economy around worker-owned coops.

The rest of this site might disagree though.

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

#505

Post by whattheheckheck »

vrganj wrote: post #504
whattheheckheck wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the implied call to action there? What's actually the solution?

You asking me? The solution is a workers revolution and a restructuring of the economy around worker-owned coops. The rest of this site might disagree though.

Yeah thanks for answering, im also in the camp of understanding the truths underpinning the steel man argument behind the original phrase but not seeing a widespread clear path towards a better future with the proposed solution. What's the solution for class conflict? The meat packing workers coop wouldn't be as favorable to work in as the elementary school teacher worker coop nor as the carpenter worker coop. How do you handle technological innovation? How would you defend against other nations attempting to invade and steal your stuff? Would the weapons worker coop take the hospital builders materials to produce weapons?

I really dont think it nets a higher standard of living and will introduce millions of deaths. Not sure how thats more ethical

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

#506

Post by mpyne »

jjj123 wrote: post #358
mpyne wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but not everyone’s open source projects are meant as a gift to the world for anyone and everyone to use How is that open source then? There's a reason they added the "no discrimination against persons or groups" and "no discrimination against fields of endeavor" clauses when OSI came up with the open source definition in the 90s. https://opensource.org/osd "Anyone and everyone" was always part of the gig if you wan…

Fair point! I was conflating source-available and open source. I guess you cannot limit based on user or use case, but you can set rules on attribution and copyleft in OSS, both of which aren’t respected by AI. Still seems different than a no strings attached gift.

Yes, I think there's a range between 'give it away I don't care what happens after' (public domain) to the "just cite me bro" (BSD/MIT style) and farther into the full copyleft where you have rights to see and modify the source but also obligations if you redistribute from there.

AI can't follow all the rules across that range, but GPL-style licenses can also be hard to show infringement of even confined only to humans, which is one reason why you see things like encoding license onto module boundaries in projects like the Linux kernel.

Even there, something like io_uring might be GPL but if I use the same techniques to build my library around a send/receive queue concept, as an AI might generate, is it still copyright infringement? I would argue it's never really been the open source model to prevent developers from reimplementing architectural styles or approaches (that's the logic of proprietary software authors), they've instead been after protecting their specific distributable libraries and applications.

These are dicey questions even outside of AI, AI just brings them front and center because the linkage between training data and generated output seems more direct. But humans do also learn the same way, by studying source code when possible, even if they later write something from scratch you can't go and unlearn what you've learned.

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

#507

Post by tonyedgecombe »

verisimi wrote: post #498
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know. I’m more wary of a company that makes its money from advertising than one that profits on the goods it sells me.

Do you think any corporate isn't extracting data from you? Put techno companies to one side (as if not all companies are not actually tech nowadays) - what about pharmaceuticals, cars? All extractive as well as selling a product. Supermarkets? Financial companies? If you think there are companies not observing the data as well as selling the product, I don't think you're paying attention.

>Do you think any corporate isn't extracting data from you?

I think they are extracting and sharing data to varying degrees and that some have a business model which pushes them to one end of the spectrum.

If you take the example of supermarkets you used nearly all of them push loyalty cards which they use as a mechanism to manipulate your purchasing decisions but the one I frequent doesn't (Aldi UK).

They clearly aren't all the same.

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

#508

Post by vrganj »

whattheheckheck wrote: post #505
vrganj wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asking me? The solution is a workers revolution and a restructuring of the economy around worker-owned coops. The rest of this site might disagree though.

Yeah thanks for answering, im also in the camp of understanding the truths underpinning the steel man argument behind the original phrase but not seeing a widespread clear path towards a better future with the proposed solution. What's the solution for class conflict? The meat packing workers coop wouldn't be as favorable to work in as the elementary school teacher worker coop nor as the carpenter worker coop. How do…

> What's the solution for class conflict?

The solution is to dismantle the class system altogether.

> The meat packing workers coop wouldn't be as favorable to work in as the elementary school teacher worker coop nor as the carpenter worker coop.

This is giving us a chance at a true meritocracy. You can test into any of the more favorable coops as long as you have the skills.

> How do you handle technological innovation?

I don't see how that would be any different?

> How would you defend against other nations attempting to invade and steal your stuff?

This is premised on a world revolution. No other nations.

> Would the weapons worker coop take the hospital builders materials to produce weapons?

I'm not sure there's much overlap between those two.

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

#509

Post by Fizz43 »

vrganj wrote: post #504
whattheheckheck wrote: post #502

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what is the implied call to action there? What's actually the solution?

You asking me? The solution is a workers revolution and a restructuring of the economy around worker-owned coops. The rest of this site might disagree though.

How does that prevent anything? You'll still have the exact same issue. Unless you think a google employee would be the same class as a small mom and pop employee just because they both own a share of their workplace.

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

#510

Post by vrganj »

Fizz43 wrote: post #509
vrganj wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You asking me? The solution is a workers revolution and a restructuring of the economy around worker-owned coops. The rest of this site might disagree though.

How does that prevent anything? You'll still have the exact same issue. Unless you think a google employee would be the same class as a small mom and pop employee just because they both own a share of their workplace.

The defining feature of class dynamics is ownership of the means of production vs labor participation.

If everybody owns the means of production and everyone participates in the labor force, class distinctions disappear.

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