> Tokens can also be burnt on decompilation.

Prediction 1. We're going to have cheap "write Photoshop and AutoCad in Rust as a new program / FOSS" soon. No desktop software will be safe. Everything will be cloned.

Prediction 2. We'll have a million Linux and Chrome and other FOSS variants with completely new codebases.

Prediction 3. People will trivially clone games, change their assets. Modding will have a renaissance like never before.

Prediction 4. To push back, everything will move to thin clients.

I think if prediction 1 is true (that it becomes cheap to clone existing software in a way that doesn't violate copyright law), the response will not be purely technical (moving to thin clients, or otherwise trying to technically restrict the access surface to make reverse engineering harder). Instead I'd predict that companies look to the law to replace the protections that they previously got from copyright.

Obvious possibilities include:

* More use of software patents, since these apply to underlying ideas, rather than specific implementations.

* Stronger DMCA-like laws which prohibit breaking technical provisions designed to prevent reverse engineering.

Similarly, if the people predicting that humans are going to be required to take ultimate responsibility for the behaviour of software are correct, then it clearly won't be possible for that to be any random human. Instead you'll need legally recognised credentials to be allowed to ship software, similar to the way that doctors or engineers work today.

Of course these specific predictions might be wrong. I think it's fair to say that nobody really knows what might have changed in a year, or where the technical capabilities will end up. But I see a lot of discussions and opinions that assume zero feedback from the broader social context in which the tech exists, which seems like they're likely missing a big part of the picture.