[johnnyworker]

The point is that it's infinitely better in not being there "just to take your jobs and make a few VCs richer". Nobody even claimed it's more performant. It's like the difference getting nothing, but keeping your land, and getting glass pearls, losing your land. You have to completely ignore the meat of the argument to even pretend there is a contest.

And this is without considering what happened if we stopped feeding hostile actors and supported ourselves, instead of keeping to do the reverse. Not just here and there, but consistently for decades.

[PoignardAzur]

That argument seems more political than practical.

If on one hand you have a tool that you can actually use to help with your job, and another that sounds like a very advanced chatbot but doesn't actually provide value, well the second tool being open-source doesn't change that it's doesn't provide value.

(Also, assuming that open-source tools aren't going to upend a ton of people's jobs seems really naive. These people aren't going to be any less bitter that their jobs are taken by freelance nerds instead of corporate nerds.)

[motoxpro]

There is no way I am going to spin up my own worse LLM so a few people will make less money. Even if it was 1-5% better. It's just not worth the time.

[johnnyworker]

It's not "a few people making less money", it's a few gigantic monoliths carving up the future, like blind watch-destroying gods -- or at least wanting to, no matter how nicely they dress it up. And it's not about utility or chance of success for everyone, either, but rather trying to do something in an ethical or more clean way just because that's more fun for them.

But I have to admit to being an idealist, and while I disagree with you because of that, I don't think you should be downvoted for basically just bringing up the majority position. It's easy to complain over people not being starry-eyed idealists that make great personal sacrifices to bring along an utopia for people in 10 generations, or whatever. It's way harder to find and teach the joy of doing something for the sake of doing it, and at the same time come up with medium and long-term ideas that are realistic enough to make working towards them fulfilling, but also genuinely beautiful and true. The whole "rather than teaching to build a ship (we can't even agree on!), teach people how to long for the ocean" thing. It's a really hard problem.

[motoxpro]

Wow. Beautifully articulated.

What a pleasant reply to read. I don’t have an argument regarding my position other than I agree that what you’re saying is true and that getting people like me to care and make sacrifices not just today but every day in a long term way is what makes hard problems hard.

[johnnyworker]

Thank you :) But I didn't mean to say it's those pesky non-dreamers who make the problem hard. Three idealists will have ten possible utopias that are partly or completely mutually exclusive.

And to be frank, I think a lot of the finger pointing at people who don't care enough about issue X or Y is really because of not having found good ways to work constructively and make progress with however few people who do care. Partly also because people cannot agree (for long, tend to splinter into more pure sub groups and all that).

At any rate, the way can't be "I should feel bad and do better", but rather "I want what they got!". And the burden can't be on the people who aren't yet seeing anything that makes them excited to get excited anyway. And it can't be about being selfless for the benefit of others, or future generations. It has to its own reward right here and now. It is about and for you just as it is anyone else, if you know what I mean. Sacrificing others and sacrificing oneself is sacrificing people in both cases. Neither is noble IMO.

I guess the best chance of fighting tech giant strangleholds is still empowering "normal people" to carve out their own little spaces. All people will not finally learn how to make websites if only we crushed Facebook and what have you, but instead if more people had fun making their own little websites, and if we could come up with good ways for them to connect(peer-to-peer on the desktop, right after Linux!), Facebook and others would play nicer. It's not that big companies are a problem, it's the abusive things they do when they're the only game in town.

And likewise, and back on topic: a really good argument would be something I don't have the knowledge for, namely things you can do with a LLM that you can fully control (or at least can wildly poke at and experiment with, or just "download mods for") versus a much more powerful LLM that you don't really control, other than your prompts.

Thanks for reading!