Technology

Sir this is Lemmy, I'm surprised you're not downvoted to hell

It's really weird for Linus to reference "the open source thing" while encouraging people to use legally dubious closed-source software with legally dubious output

As a non-dev person who recently started using AI to get into doing some computer programming, I think the marketing by the CEOs has done a lot of harm. People who truly know what they're doing and who are very careful thinkers could see all along that this technology is not at a point to where the following hype was true:

-it will not entirely replace human workers,

-it's almost certainly not going to be better at what it's doing than a true expert,

-and it remains to be seen whether or not it will ever be able to generate truly unique, bespoke, and fundamentally new solutions.. you know, like what humans had to do for every single issue that came before..

And what it's really good at from my perspective is allowing a non-expert person to generate productive materials in an area where they are not a master-level technician/developer/knowledge worker. It has really dissolved the barrier of entry and the value associated with routine technical skills, for better or worse.

The practical issues though involved with massive data centers, the price rises associated with computer parts, and all the other environmental garbage that's happening is pretty discouraging though. This technology has legit potential for benefit, but the companies and CEOs have ultimately made it into a moral conundrum whether or not it should be put to use.

Typical capitalism, imo ..

and can be used to amplify good work too.

But at this point I would argue the downsides aren't worth it. Especially when the bubble pops, subsidies run out, and people will be forced to pay the actual price

A lot of my smaller issues with ai could be solved if it was used better like how I'd much rather see an ai that could be used to make music instead help you find similar songs or if ai giving you all the answers messes your ability to think why not put in the effort for a great search engine that doesn't require you to already know what the perfect search terms are like a libertarian in a way more so than an oracle, reverse an ai art bot to find similar human made art from an ai image if you can't describe it

And it's the job of lawmakers to rein in the harmfulness of AI, not of open-source software developers.

And even if it isn't open source, expecting companies to be the moral police without actual jurisdiction involved has already led to censorship, like Steam purging a bunch of games because of pressure from Visa and MasterCard. This isn't something to be encouraged, even when it's for things we don't like, until it's actually legally clear how AI is harmful and not "dubious".

Not that this mail is about users anyway, but about contributors. I didn't get from this if Linus wants to push AI use for Linux contributors or not, but I doubt he does. But blocking people from using it by their own decision would be a bad move, as long as the output is reviewed and works.

Yes, anyone who wants to protest any use of AI whatsoever in software development, just on pure principle, is on the fringe at this point. It is a tool and needs to be used responsibly but it’s no longer credible to say that it has no use or can’t be used responsibly.

Well most of them won't read beyond the headline; they'll likely just make massive assumptions based on title and their own predispositions. Sounds to me like Linus is trying to leave room for some of the practical nature of LLMs and implement them as useful tools, but it seems like he may be a little ignorant of the various agendas of LLM developers themselves. Just my stupid take.

Economic damage, environmental damage, concentration of power with multi-billionaire fascists, cultural damage due to huge quantities of slop crowding out everything else, mass unemployment and the exploitation of remaining workers, disempowerment of everyone who doesn't have the resources to control this technology, destruction of ordinary people's access to suitably powerful computing machinery so that we're all forced to either rent access to AI from its corporate gatekeepers or not use it, total surveillance by the state and its favoured corporations, profiling and predictive policing, marketing, etc. That's quite a lot to object to, and I'm sure there's more.

Economical, environmental, ethical. How can it be used responsibly when the Earth is burning and making it required pilfering the sum total of human knowledge and creativity for private profit?

AI can be both a bubble and a useful tool at the same time, a crash won't make us forget all about it, instead I have a feeling a crash may help mature AI the way dotcom bubble did web 2.0

To be honest I would not be surprised of any political views Torvalds would have. 😅

He did not use the term "social warrior".

The quotation marks indicates a distance from the expression. They're clearly used to show that Linus considers the term someone else's label and something he doesn't endorses.

While I also disagree with how he have behaved and his opinions, I think it's important to not make up alternative versions of what he has said or not said.

Given that GNU Hurd started over 35 years ago and the only distro, such as it is, that's using it has latest news from 2018, you could be waiting for a while.