[ori_b]

I'm not interested supporting in anyone who is willing to build on stolen property just so that we can accelerate enshittification and damage the environment. When the AI companies pay artists for their training material, stop building gas pipelines directly to data centers, and work on putting UBI in place before they try to replace all white collar labour, it may be worth revisiting.

There's a reason that believing AI is bringing a better world is a more fringe position than believing in telekinesis. The AI companies are strip-mining the commons, and leaving the world worse off for it.

Edit: it's interesting watching the votes on this bounce up and down between the people inside and outside of the pro-ai fringe react.

[Centigonal]

Good luck! The world needs more rms types (specifically referring to people who adhere strongly to moral principles over expedience)

[adwn]

Are you sure about "rms types" specifically? Stallman is very ineffective in his proselytization, owing to his complete refusal of any kind of compromise or concession to dissenting positions. This stance may keep your soul pure and righteous, but it won't bring you one millimeter closer to your objectives.

[Centigonal]

Yes, I am. I think Chatto looks great, and I use AI in my job every single day. I've been following OpenAI since MuseNet. I'm uncomfortable about the coming Kuznets curve for AI, the wealth concentrating effects, the energy use, the stunting effects on human intelligence and connection, and the abuse of training data associated with AI. I am that "let's take a nuanced approach and find out how we can get most of the good without most of the bad" person. I think people like me are probably the majority stance when it comes to AI use among tech people. I also think that we'll be steamrolled by moneyed interests and society-level incentives in the short term, and I don't really see a way around that.

In the absence of a way to win with nuance, I think it's just nice to have people walking around who live rigidly by their principles as an example of what is possible.

[bluerooibos]

Would you say copying and finding solutions on Stackoverflow is building on stolen property?

I'm no fan of AI companies, but I fail to see how people using it to build open-source software is a bad thing.

[ori_b]

Are the solutions on stackoverflow licensed in a way that allows people to use them that way? Is this true for AI training data?

[OtomotO]

Depends on whether the answer o. Stackoverflow was given willingly or at gunpoint ^^

[anonym29]

How do you feel about open weight models, and fully open source models (all data, training scripts/recipies, and model weights all open source)?

[ori_b]

I'm not aware of any advanced models with full training data available, let alone available with paid licenses for the training data.

The process of training and using them is also not likely to be any better than commercial models. 23% of Ireland's power is going to data centers, spreading that among less efficient hardware in less efficient setups is unlikely to be better, unless the models are so bad nobody uses them.

And I'm also not aware of anyone working on these models trying to reduce the social damage they are going to do.

[galaxyLogic]

> trying to reduce the social damage they are going to do.

I'm worried about that in particular because when I started using AI I often felt I wanted to say something nice to it, like just "thanks" after I got someting working with its help. But then I started thinking I'm crazy, that's a waste of typing, what does it matter if I tell AI "thanks" or not.

So I don't thank AI any more, do you?

But that means we get used to this style of conversation and soon enough we don't tell humans thanks either. We dont' put in the energy to lubricate our social interactions. I'm worried that interacting with AI will make us all rude.

[anonym29]

>I'm not aware of any models with full training data available, let alone available with full licensing.

Check out the OLMo family from the Allen Institute for AI: https://allenai.org/blog/olmo3

Also worth looking at EleutherAI, LLM360, SmolLM, Apertus. Apterus even respects opt-out notices in their collection of the dataset they distribute. KL3M from Kelvin Legal is even trained on a 100% copyright-free legal/governmental corpus.

>23% of Ireland's power is going to data centers

This isn't even a rounding error in terms of global energy usage. Besides, renewable energy is cheaper than non-renewable energy now. Energy demand itself directly drives the deployment of renewable energy. Needing more electricity in a capitalist country literally causes the energy mix to become more green over time.

>And I'm also not aware of anyone working on these models trying to reduce the social damage they are going to do.

Is it fair to account for the social damage without accounting for the social good, like the unprecedented democratization not just of mere information, but knowledge and understanding itself, around the world? Think about how many deaths will be avoided, how many billions or trillions of years of human life will be gained over time, all of the people that gain access to a personalized, individually tailored tutor for any subject on earth, all of the medical and legal advances, etc.

[beachy]

> Needing more electricity in a capitalist country literally causes the energy mix to become more green over time.

Perhaps true, but meaningless except as a vanity metric if fossil fuel usage rises as well.

[anonym29]

EU and US have had declining total carbon emissions for over 2 decades now. The global rise in total carbon emissions comes from outside the west.

[kajika91]

> Check out the OLMo family from the Allen Institute for AI: https://allenai.org/blog/olmo3

Is this a joke of just blatant publicity for this Billionaire "philanthropist"? This olmo uses random data of totally infringing license database such a StackEdu (https://huggingface.co/datasets/HuggingFaceTB/stack-edu).

I took this first dataset from what olmo claim to use and check a random used data -> https://github.com/rodriguescarina/URI . Boom MIT licensed (where is the credit?), 0 opt-in for AI training as far as I see.

[ori_b]

You're right, the usage in the USA is bigger.

https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67704

Across all cases, servers alone accounted for an estimated 7% of commercial sector electricity consumption in 2025. Data center server electricity use grows to 22%–33% of commercial building electricity use by 2050 across our cases.

Distributing that outside of special purpose, optimized data centers isn't going to bring that number down.

> Apterus even respects opt-out notices in their collection of the dataset they distribute.

Yeah. Uh. That's the bare minimum.

[ksec]

So we are at a stage where AGPL 3.0 is not enough and using AI assisted coding is considered evil?

[monkeywork]

your comment sounds like your the type to say you won't buy a house in North America cause its stolen land...

[apsurd]

You're convincing me to side with this ori_b here.

I knee-jerked downvoted their initial take because it reads as ineffective. boycotts just concentrate the energy of the other side even more. If anything we need more participation across the spectrum to shape what isn't going away.

But reading the discussion, deliberate advocacy and taking a stance counts too. Um yeah, there is a problem with profiting from real-estate-go-up willful-ignorance.

[ori_b]

Exactly. As long as they benefit in the short term, who cares about the damage done? Who knows, maybe you'll end up making enough money to avoid any future consequences, too. Good luck with that.

[subhobroto]

> anyone who is willing to build on stolen property just so that we can accelerate enshittification and damage the environment

Others have made solid arguments(Stackoverflow, open weight models, and fully open source models) - but I encourage you to study the ecosystem post War II and the 1970's Silicon Valley, especially how the semiconductor companies "innovated".

The tiny little MOSFETs you're employing to read this are all built on stolen IP.

As someone famous said, good artists copy; great artists steal.

[customguy]

> The tiny little MOSFETs you're employing to read this are all built on stolen IP.

The alternative to an LLM typing code is a human typing the code. What is the alternative to microchips?

> As someone famous said, good artists copy; great artists steal.

And people who could not be further from artists, or even art enjoyers, think stealing makes them artists, too. Because they're that far removed from art, or any grace, really.

Which doesn't go against OP or the project, which I find delightful. Although I generally share many reservations of "AI critics", I'm also a starved: if it's snappier and uses less resources than something humans coded, come right in! At least if it's a neat thing like this seems to be, and not some sprawling trojan horse with code that "works" but looks terrible... machine optimized stuff that is opaque to and not made for humans need not apply.

I'd bet 99% of overall token usage has nothing lasting to show for it, and of the 1% that actually compound into anything 99% are nothing like this. So just like a broken clock can be right twice a day, a super correct soldier of Butler can hold fire twice a day, no?

[subhobroto]

> What is the alternative to microchips?

There are different ways to answer this. One person gave a literal answer - Vacuum Tubes. My, alternate answer is, humans. Computers are machines that automate human processes. If we didn't have a digital domain, we would just be doing what we were doing before it, printing and writing.

> I'd bet 99% of overall token usage has nothing lasting to show for it, and of the 1% that actually compound into anything 99% are nothing like this

What you're betting with?

LLMs have changed to game on velocity of knowledge work. The future has changed and "nothing lasting to show for it" is a very limited take on the matter.

LLMs have democratized knowledge.

[customguy]

"The future has changed", oh my.

The idea that "the future is changed now, so you can't change it again" is the language of abuse, not the language of wisdom. We'll just change it again by draconically punishing thieves. Then we can have the best of both worlds: cool tech, and no Eloi/Morlock bs.

Anyway, I simply meant that most vibe coded stuff doesn't seem to get maintained, and that most token usage doesn't produce any artifacts to begin with.

[subhobroto]

> "the future is changed now, so you can't change it again"

that's not what I said.

As technologists, we repeatedly change the future - that's what makes all the pain, sweat and tears worth it. 35 years ago, when I was getting serious about computers, buying them and encouraging others to use them, people would shake their fingers at me, saying how these bulky TVs that you can press buttons at were a passing fad, that it was an absolute waste of everyone's time even thinking one would sit in front of a TV and press at buttons for more than an hour a day, that there was no reasonable way it would translate into anything but extremely niche entertainment. They would lecture me on how I was a kid who didn't know any better, that I was wasting my time out of ignorance and that I should listen to the adults who had decades of life experience and focus my time and continue studying organic chemistry and become a doctor because who didn't need a doctor?

> most vibe coded stuff doesn't seem to get maintained

even if this was true, cost of code consumption and generation has fallen so much, that anyone in a developed country can point their favorite agent to the "unmaintained vibe coded stuff" and then maintain it to their liking or rewrite it from scratch the way they wanted it to.

> most token usage doesn't produce any artifacts to begin with

Your previous statement contradicts "doesn't produce any artifacts" directly. Given what you have told me, the shallowest but congruent argument that can be made is "most token usage produces unmaintained vibe coded stuff".

It looks like you don't necessarily like what LLMs are providing to society and I can see why one would like to hold that opinion. I don't agree with that at all, because it's literally untrue given the insane demand - both from an everyday Joe and from corps the world over. No one's burning $20+/mo every month of their own money in this economy just because they are not getting anything of value.

My personal AI spend is $350/mo and it has been that for the last year. My blockers are gone. Projects that had been a distant thought, only cosidered during a flight, a wait at an airport or for a bus or Uber is finished in a weekend. My QoL and those of my family has improved so much, that I am really grateful about the times I live in.

My 100 year old grandfather struggles to communicate and remember things. I cannot expect to give him a tablet and have him use it. We have spent years looking for apps that we could use to make his life better. None of us are mobile app devs. Solved in a week.

I had random headaches when I woke up really early, ever since I was a teenager. Tens of thousands of dollars spent chasing lab tests and doctors, no solution. Resolved in a month.

The most I can do is encourage you to set aside your current stance, and just for one day, consider what if you could use LLMs to improve your life. What would you do?

[customguy]

> even if this was true, cost of code consumption and generation has fallen so much, that anyone in a developed country can point their favorite agent to the "unmaintained vibe coded stuff" and then maintain it to their liking or rewrite it from scratch the way they wanted it to.

Yes, and? In context, my point was that as far as vibe coded stuff (that I saw so far, and that gets posted on HN), this is head and shoulders above the usual goes. This general evangelism of LLM that isn't even aware of the context is really grating.

> It looks like you don't necessarily like what LLMs are providing to society

I hate what they took. If you steal from Meta, they sue you. That is all there is to say.

> The most I can do is encourage you to set aside your current stance, and just for one day, consider what if you could use LLMs to improve your life. What would you do?

Do you not understand that ethics can be a value in and of itself? I'm not ethical to interact with trinkets, I interact with trinkets (with gimmicks, with toys, with product, with dust) to be ethical. The best you can have you were born with: integrity. How much of that we can preserve is the only challenge in life I take seriously. You're asking someone who dines like a king every second what they would cook if they were "allowed" shit as an ingredient.

I have no "qualms" toying with LLM. I did, I got bored, so now I don't. When it comes to generating "art", I actually do refrain from using it even when it could be useful, because yes, it's generally theft. Wake me up when there are LLM fully trained on licensed content, and in the meantime, accept a no.

[jazzyjackson]

vacuum tubes : MOSFETS :: human coders : LLMs

[ori_b]

You mean human office workers, no?

If you want a modicum more job security, get hired to deliver packages for Amazon.

[kajika91]

Glad to see people trying to talk sense in this community but the AI chill here is very strong. Reminds me of the proud "we should go back to our military-industrial root".

Also funny how it's always about "the smartest guy I ever met" impliyng other dev aren't that smart. There are easily tens of thousands of devs who are way above anyone's here level but there are coding OS module, GNU tooling or other less shining stuff, or there are not American enough.

It's tiring to see the usual corp slop : github, twitter or blue sky, vibe coding, etc. Then see the complain years latter than the product was "enshitified", all was there from the beginning. Think about the real FOSS software (GNU tooling, ffmpeg, Godot, codeberg/forgejo) to see long term software than work and carry all this money-makimg mess.

As for chatto the dependency mountain is a red flag to me, this is asking for problem in my opinion, were talking primarily about sending text here.

[teleforce]

Stealing ideas, intellectual property (IP), etc are happening throughout the age of the human civilization, that does not prevent us as human moving forward.

That's why there's little to no credit given to Muslim scholars (Arabic, Persian, Moorish Spain, etc) by the western scholars, by conveniently dismissing the Muslim golden era as "Dark Ages" but at the same time stealing the knowledge (idea, equations design, tools, etc) for most of the prior inventions by the Muslim scholars, for example the telescope.

Even worse not only the knowledge (ideas, design, equations, tools, etc) in science, engineering and technology were blatantly copied and stolen, no credit is properly given to these Muslim scholars contributions by saying that the Muslim scholars at best were just merely translating the Greek scholars works and ideas [1]. I suspect that Newton also blatantly copied the many great works by al-Haitham (Alhazen) but not giving him proper credits [2].

C'est la vie, and life goes on.

[1] Islamic Astronomy and Copernicus:

https://www.tuba.gov.tr/files/yayinlar/bilim-ve-dusun/TUBA-9...

[2] Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham

[brigandish]

Firstly, there is a difference between a telescope and the prior advances that led to a telescope being invented. The telescope was not invented by a muslim scholar, hence that being why no one gives credit to one of them for that.

Secondly, to this claim:

> That's why there's little to no credit given to Muslim scholars (Arabic, Persian, Moorish Spain, etc) by the western scholars, by conveniently dismissing the Muslim golden era as "Dark Ages" but at the same time stealing the knowledge (idea, equations design, tools, etc) for most of the prior inventions by the Muslim scholars, for example the telescope.

From the link you provided, in the very first paragraph:

> The works of Alhazen were frequently cited during the Scientific Revolution by Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Johannes Kepler, and Christiaan Huygens.

No credit or frequent credit - which is it?

[teleforce]

>No credit or frequent credit - which is it?

>>there's little to no credit given to Muslim scholars

[brigandish]

Again, in the link you provided, in the very first paragraph, it mentions several great names who are said to have given frequent credit to muslim scholars. Are you saying that is false? If so, you have the ability to edit that Wikipedia article, and you should.

Don't forget the legacy section, where there is a long list of people and organisations giving him enormous credit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_al-Haytham#Legacy

[teleforce]

The fact that Newton did not cite Alhazen or Al-Haytham in his seminal and infamous optic books in English tell you what you need to know regarding the treatment by the western scholars of the muslims scholars [1],[2].

IMHO, this critical omission caused most of the modern physics and optical books and textbooks did not include Alhazen or Al-Haytham eventhough he literally contributed to modern optics more than Newton himself and lately considered the to be the father of modern science. Most probably the word camera (from the Arabic word kamar meaning room) was derived from his experimental work on optic.

For perspective, I was educated in my high school in England, and in my Physics class no muslim scholars name ever mentioned in my many textbooks and in classes. The same goes to my chemistry and math classes. Guess how many times Newton was mentioned in my physics classes and textbooks? To be honest I lost my count because too many times.

Mind you this little to no credits phenomena happened across the board from math, physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, medicine, etc.

To put the things in perspective, now if you don't cite seminal prior work related to your research your paper or thesis, it will be subjected to re-submission.

Imagine if Einstein did not even mention Newton's contributions in gravity, the English people will be go to war with Germany. OK, they did but that's for totally different reasons.

[1] Did Isaac Newton plagiarize his work from Ibn-Al Haytham?

https://www.quora.com/Did-Isaac-Newton-plagiarize-his-work-f...

[2] Opticks:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opticks

[brigandish]

> For perspective, I was educated in my high school in England, and in my Physics class no muslim scholars name ever mentioned in my many textbooks and in classes. The same goes to my chemistry and math classes. Guess how many times Newton was mentioned in my physics classes and textbooks? To be honest I lost my count because too many times.

Physics is the study of physics, not history, no muslim scholars are relevant to modern physics, whereas Newton is relevant to modern physics. That's either because he's closer in the chain or because his work remains relevant, but either way he gets a mention for being relevant. Not every European mathematician or physicist is mentioned either, for the same reason. Descartes never came up, nor did Brahmagupta, nor did Tesla… the list of greats would be too long to mention and just wouldn't be relevant. Complaining about people nigh on 400 years ago not writing citations properly is an insubstantial complaint, to say the least.

No one else needs to care about your religion but you.