Can’t escape AI slop projects from meat proxies man. Every single open source project smells like Claude Code recently. Sad times.
Can’t escape AI slop projects from meat proxies man. Every single open source project smells like Claude Code recently. Sad times.
The entire technology stole from every single talented individual including actual open source devs. Someone can use it and create the best app ever and I wouldn’t care. It’s unethical.
That is if you believe “intellectual property” to be an ethical concept in the first place. Many in the free software movement do not. Many of us also do not believe copying, sharing, or remixing is “theft.” That is a propaganda term from the copyright cartel.
(Note that I think so-called generative AI has many problems but this is not one that concerns the free software movement imho)
I don’t think copying, sharing or remixing is theft unless it’s done by a big corporation to make money without attribution to my work.
That’s very brave of you. In the meantime other open source developers will continue using AI models that currently exist to benefit their coding were it can.
“open source developers will continue using AI models that currently exist to benefit their coding were it can” does not undo that all mainstream, commercial AI agents are the product of theft of labor from all the programmers, artists, authors, etc of all the media that the models were trained on.
You can say the ends justify the means, but you have to own that commercial AI agents, and the work they produce when wielded by humans, are a profit engine for thieves. At the end of the day, those programmers are using an AI agent that is being sold to them by a corporation that is profiting off of theft. “But the AI tool works well!” isn’t the end of the moral discussion. How did the AI tool get so good at programming?
Copying a FOSS project for personal use and development isn’t unethical. Copying the FOSS project into an AI model and then selling that AI model for profit is. And it’s been done on a scale that’s difficult to fathom and impossible to undo. Persons whose crafts have been irreparably undermined by these models have had their livelihoods impacted and there will be no means of exacting justice from those who have committed to this technology because they are simply too wealthy to hold to account.
If you’re a regular guy and you try to download and disseminate information like Aaron Swartz, suddenly the law has a lot to say about intellectual property theft.
Of course I support Aaron Swartz and his endeavours to make information free. I also don’t see how using open source projects to build an AI model is theft. Intellectual property just shouldn’t be a thing at all.
Building an AI model is not, itself, the issue. Profit is.
You can’t legally take someone else’s work for free and then profit from it without their permission. Especially when the licenses for those works specifically say they are not to be used for profit.
If OpenAI, Google, Meta et al were not charging for their AI models (or profiting from them in any way), I would see no issue with that. But they are profiting immensely by turning their software product into the largest speculative investment in modern history. Even the free tiers of their models are part of this larger business plan. They are betting large swaths of the western economy on it. It is unethical.
I really don’t care about what the law says. What is ethical and what is legal are often complete opposites at this point.
AI companies lose money on there free AI tiers. And we both know there larger business model is not going to work. Being in the moral right by not using corporate software, or telling other people to not use corporate software isn’t actually doing anything. Furthermore many people use Chinese AI models that benefit workers rather than take from them do you have issues with Chinese models?
That’s something that you and the AI companies have in common! Although in their case they simply have enough money that there are no meaningful legal consequences to their unethical actions.
This is wholly irrelevant to our discussion as I’ve not only accused commercial AI of legal misdeeds, but also of unethical practices. They will never be properly held to account for the laws they’ve broken, let alone the (perfectly legal, but completely indefensible) actions taken in pursuit of the larger goal such as cutting down forests to make room for datacenters, evaporating entire lakes to cool them, and straining the power grid to power them.
I’ve addressed this already. The existence of the “free tier” is irrelevant when they are still selling that exact same product (an AI model, but without restrictions/token caps) to the Premium and Enterprise users (billions of dollars in contracts across the tech industry alone). The “free tier” is, to them, a cost of doing business. ChatGPT was the fastest adoption of any app in history for a reason: it was free. That was a business decision with a single, solitary, long-term goal: profit. A Google search is free. Always has been. And yet they managed to turn a “free” web search into one of the most powerful entities on earth (Alphabet, Inc). Because it wasn’t actually free; that was just part of their business model.
And you’ve invested appropriately to take advantage of this fact, right? You’ve purchased puts options for AI companies since you “know” their trillion-dollar gambit will ultimately fail, right? After all, if you play your cards right, you’ll be set for life by successfully betting against them.
I do not recall saying any such thing.
This is a non sequitur. Chinese AI is built on stolen works just like western AI. There is no difference there.
I’m not a free software developer (or a developer at all), but the idea that gen AI doesn’t concern the free software movement seems odd to me. I think there’s a pretty big space between being a big “intellectual property” proponent or copyright cheerleader and just not wanting to have your work taken without any regard for the conditions you set for sharing it. Someone may be fine with sharing their code for free as long as they get attribution or the derivative shares-alike, for instance. AI ignores the licenses that people release their code under, both copyleft and permissive.
This article mentions some of the concerns that the FSF has regarding gen AI: https://lwn.net/Articles/1040888/
This more recent article indicates that the FSF seems inclined to push for gen AI companies to open up their models: https://www.theregister.com/software/2026/03/16/fsf-urges-ai-vendors-to-liberate-llms/5221192
Edit: PS Consider that if all IP law went away, all open source licenses would be moot. At that point, a lot of people who develop and release their software under open source licenses may stop doing so. Gen AI is already having a chilling effect on all creative endeavors that can be output as a digital output. The elimination of IP laws would make this chilling effect much more severe.
It’s like being a plumber.
The plumber comes over, looks at the problem, says hmm, taps on pipe and charges you $500.
You’re not paying for the hammer or the 30 seconds of work. You’re paying for the 25 years it took them to learn what to do so that it fixes the issue.
The hammer is fungible. The plumber is not. Don’t be the hammer.
If all the IP law was repealed I’d celebrate, but enforcing them on everyone except the worst tech companies is not an improvement.
That didn’t start with AI.
I don’t like how haphazardly AI is being shoved into everything or the way the big AI companies operate but this kind of performative ludditism is not really helping.
As with pretty much all technology the problem isn’t the technology itself it’s the economic system under which it was created and how said economic system makes use of it. The technology clearly shows at least some promise and could be used for actually useful things at least to a certain point, the fact that the techbros are turning it into a God of their own religion doesn’t make that less true.
One cool thing that people are doing with AI is reverse engineering proprietary software and putting it up for free, mostly video games. That directly throws a wrench into the whole IP bullshit and it’s making a certain part of the IP rentseeking bourgeoisie shit their pants, that can only be a good thing in my book.
As with the ethics of it all it’s messy as with pretty much any commodity produced under capitalism. You never bought a product from a company with unethical business practices before? You never took medicine that was tested on animals? Come on now.
Do you even know what ludditism is?
Yes.
Do you? Pressing X to doubt, champ. Pressing X to doubt.
Quick - to wikipedia!
“it’s unethical”
Uh huh. Which framework? Kantian? Virtue ethics? Rawlsian justice? Utilitarianism? Pick a card, any card.
Lay it out, big man. Nail that shit to the door like Martin Luther.
PS: “I don’t like it” != “it’s unethical”
Christ do we really need to lay out a fucking “framework” of ethicality to come to the conclusion, that no, I don’t really like my software to be haphazardly glued together with chewing gum, duct tape and the Environment Destroyer built on billions of lines of code. The licensing issue itself is fucked beyond belief here, and the “originality” of said code.
Fuck me Amazon is literally shredding warehouses of books to keep up this bullshit. So my ethical framework is one that says “Fuck you”, to you specifically, the most.
You do when you’re talking shit like it’s rolled gold. Ethics isn’t “I don’t like it, therefore bad”. Bro made the claim…he gets to back his shit up. Or he gets to look like 20 something shouting into the void with penchant for shitty memes.
No hate for OP. But news flash - 99% of all code is AI assisted now. Has been for about 5 years. Sowwy.
Sure, you can fuck me if you want, but bring dinner first.
Also, you may want to look into why Amazon is shredding the books, hoss. They’re destroying them because of copyright law. A judge ruled the scanning is only fair use if the original is destroyed.
https://betanews.com/article/amazon-airtag-book-scanning-ai-training/
U got big feelings, babe. We can cuddle after we fuck if you want.
Gotcha, it’s legal so it’s acceptable. Literal baby ethics.
More like market driven perverse incentives.
Ethics is the study of oughts. That’s why the frame of reference matters. Law is the floor. Nobody said legal = acceptable. I said the copyright destruction mechanism is worth understanding before using it as a rhetorical grenade.
So no, you didn’t “gotcha”. You just wanted to try for a cheap shot / try to put words in my mouth so you could knock down a strawman for the cheap seats.
Some might consider that unethical, big man.
Removed by mod
“You argue for something I don’t like? You are not human.”
User dehumanized, thoughts successfully terminated.
Doubleplus good, comrade.
Removed by mod
You feel proud after that reply don’t you? We all have functioning brains. I think it’s obvious. For example from the Wikipedia page.
This one’s easy when you consider people that lost their jobs. If you think “fuck em” then think about how many people got affected mentally because of these chatbots. Also I don’t think Iranian and Palestinian kids being bombed with the help from AI companies would also feel happy about it.
The entire art industry is damaged beyond repair and it’s only getting worse. So many slop movies, music, books, games etc. are being released and it’s becoming harder by day to distinguish them from actual art made by humans.
The architects building your buildings, the engineers designing your airplanes or online services, the people running the fucking government are all mostly using AI to do so much that they are slowly forgetting how to do it themselves.
You can’t tell me a single fucking good thing large scale generative AI contributed to this world. Don’t come at me with marketing bs like some random math problem or “cancer research”.
We spent so much money on this bs and we have nothing apart from some broken research and incompetent people thinking they are not. If you are so entitled that you think it doesn’t matter to you because you love creating some slop with Claude’s arm up your ass then good for you.
Proud? Nah. Bemused, sure.
You hit Wikipedia and looked up utilitarianism. Cool.
Utilitarianism requires weighing all affected parties, not just the ones harmed. AI-assisted diagnosis in underserved regions. Accessibility tools for people who can’t afford specialists. Climate modelling. Translation breaking language barriers. Medical research leading to a Nobel Prize in Medicine.
“Can’t name a single good thing” isn’t a utilitarian argument. It’s vibes. And it’s prima facie untrue. There’s not much point in citing counter-examples because you’ve already made your mind up. Cf. your post history on Fuck AI.
The warfare point is a military policy conversation, not a ChatGPT one.
The art and skill atrophy concerns are legit. But that’s a “how do we manage this” conversation, not “therefore unethical.”
Note by the way I haven’t personally attacked you or accused you of having Claude’s arm up YOUR ass? That’s called an ad-hominem - look that up in your next wikipedia search.