Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

Re: Where's the beef?

> the rich bought all capacity so the pleb now is excluded from decent computing

The gatekeeping of the rich should be ended.

Corporations should not be allowed to buy chips for datacentres used to resell computing. But they should be welcome to build fabs.

Re: Where's the beef?

You missed:

* It is disastrous for the environment

* It caused prices of RAM and SSDs to skyrocket

> as time moves on, the level of future shock will subside

"subside" makes it sound gradual. If/when the bubble bursts, change will come quickly. The sooner the better.

Re: Where's the beef?

I think few of the reasons to dislike LLMs can change, either because it's impossible (philosophical humanity concerns, concerns of replacement) or infeasible (payment for training data could be implemented, but it would be so expensive that no LLM company will voluntarily do it, no regulator would require it, and if a regulator tried, LLM companies would fight it to the point of bankruptcy because they'd probably go bankrupt anyway if they were required to pay a reasonable amount for what they used). If that prediction is accurate, the few changeable reasons include only simple ones such as it increasing the price for chips, which will eventually come down but probably not for a while.

I doubt that will change the existence or vehemence of ideological arguments. As you say, there are many reasons people object to AI's use, and those opinions lead to a lot of variation in what is considered AI and what is considered acceptable use of AI. Even if those groups get smaller or people give up, people will continue to hold those opinions and seek to make others hold them too.

Re: Where's the beef?

* How do I know the work it produced isn't lifted from someone elses copyrighted work?

Re: Bootnote

I thought it was going to be:

"I'm disappointed. I thought their name was going to be "[object Object] (see Bootnote)" ..."

Re: Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

You have failed to consider, in your reading of headlines, that "Anti-AI open source" might not be one single party, and that their not being one might be one of the core points the headline was accurately expressing. But if you couldn't be bothered to read the article, thus having context and more information to use to back up your argument if you still thought the headline was bad, why should we care about your criticism?

Re: Anti-AI open source has an enemy in common, but almost nothing else

The headline is only nonsensical if you assume that "Anti-AI open source" is a single entity. That's false, and I don't even think it's a reasonable, if mistaken, assumption.

Requirements

Headlines have, as I see it, two primary requirements: clarity and brevity. Alas, these are often in direct competition.

I suppose that conflict has bedevilled headline writers since the form was invented.

(I went looking for examples on bad-headlines lists, but didn't find any. Instead, here's a completely different flavour of Oops for your amusement. It's the juxtaposition that makes it. Chef's kiss!)

Re: And another thing...

"I'm sure these sort of arguments have been used throughout history every time technology has become common place e.g. *pocket calculators*, computers, or even the internet." (emphasis added)

See, for example, Isaac Asimov's short story The Feeling of Power. [1]

Socrates criticised writing itself on that basis. (That page's final paragraph contains the actual criticism.). [2]

The Luddites had a different objection to the tech of their day. They didn't object to the new machines per se, but to what they meant for employment, pay, quality of output, etc. Sounds familiar, no?

[1] I love that in 1958, a plausible science-fiction "pocket computer" had to have a mechanical display whose "numbers whirl to a halt".

[2] The thing is, because Socrates didn't write any texts, all we know of his thought is what others wrote about him.

Re: AI is not a single thing.

You're right that AI is not a single thing. But I cringe every time anyone says "it's not really AI at all." "AI" has been the name of the field since McCarthy coined it in 1956, and it has covered everything from tree search to expert systems, planners and statistical learning ever since. It never really meant human-equivalent cognition, which is why people started calling that "AGI".

There's also the old observation that AI is whatever hasn't worked yet. Chess, OCR, machine translation, spam filtering, route-finding: all AI until they worked, then quietly reclassified as "just software".

Yes, there is a mountain of genuine AI-washing, and plenty of deployments really are IVR menus with a language model bolted on. And yes, capex has run far ahead of realised revenue. Circular vendor-financing deals, depreciation schedules on GPUs, and power constraints are all a thing. What's politely called "a correction" and more accurately called "financial meltdown" looks inevitable.

But "a natural language interface strapped on to a search engine" is just factually wrong about the architecture. A search engine retrieves documents that exist. A language model produces token sequences that have never existed anywhere, which is why "hallucination" is a failure mode at all.

Re: Software veganism

[...] and they force their worldview upon others [...]

[...] you can't force your preference of not using LLMs [...] onto other people by rejecting LLM-assisted security reports. [...]

Wait, so making organizational decisions for my own project is "forcing my worldview upon others"?

I'm having difficulties expressing how wrong that is, on how many levels, without starting an entire rant, so I won't even try.

Good luck finding an alternate dimension where everyone does everything exactly the way you like, so you don't feel like they're forcing their worldview upon on you.

Re: Software veganism

Vegans aren't educated on the subject? I'm not a vegan, and vegans can tend to go on a bit, but your point is absolute bollocks.

Re: Software veganism

Feels like I am taking the bait here, feeding the trolls so to say.

1) I am going to ignore that vegan ad hominem, interesting opener though

2) Your trampoline to jump from being uneducated to focusing on the wrong subject to environmental impact is beyond me. Mind explaining that?

3) Inference is like setting oil on fire to watch the flames, just that instead of oil, it is gas, in open-cycle turbines since closed-cycle was sold out.

4) "Forcing their world view" - I wish they did!

2nd paragraph

5) True that. I do not have a horse in that race though

6) Users are suffering anyway. Windows used to boot fine from an HDD, now imagine Win11 loading its bloated glorified-browser in every menu from HDD. Without adblockers, the internet is a cyberpunk dystopia, UI-design and usability have died some time around 2007.

7) The "vibe-coded AI slop" as you called it will not kill SaaS (which is a shame), since writing code, which AI is mediocre at, is at best the half-way point in software development (v-model).

8) The point Mr Torvalds made is the pragmatic clear vision one: The tool is there, may as well use it where applicable. It is also important to note what he did not say: Linux is not going to be remade to be an AI-first OS.

Re: privacy is in enough trouble as it is without gratuitous sh*t-stirring

Let's look at the owner's account.

"Do I like most of ÖP’s policies? No. "

This is politically naive. Do you like them? No. Do you support ALL of their policies? Yes. This is the compromise we all make in politics.

Does giving money to the company mean giving money to the owner(s)? Yes. Does that mean a customer indirectly support all of ÖPs policies? Yes.

Unless said owner gets *nothing* from his ownership (that'd be the day) you WILL support them, if lightly, by buying their service.

The rest is, of course, up to you. I recommend reading the entirety of his blog, mind.

Whilst I upvoted your comment, I think the idea was "anti-LLM FOSS browsers".

Sign. Vivaldi-user.

Steve Balmer, as an example.