Obviously, not everyone on Hacker News shares the same opinion.

But, in general, Stewart Brand’s sentiment — expressed during a panel discussion at the first Hackers’ Conference in 1984, when he said that “information wants to be free” — is broadly shared here.

His full quote was: “On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it’s so valuable… On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time.” Steve Wozniak famously responded: “Information should be free, but your time should not.”

Even among those on HN who believe that copyright serves a societal purpose, many still want copyright terms to be drastically shortened (back).

So I’m skeptical that the hostility toward AI companies is primarily based on their training on, and profiting from, the world’s knowledge without licensing it. I suspect it is rather based on their doing so without making that knowledge accessible in return. In the recent news of their destroying books, it even means reducing the chance that that knowledge will ever become open.

Yes, opening the world’s knowledge can lead to good and bad uses — just like free software can be used for great as well as for nefarious purposes. We’re generally too techno-optimistic to judge technology solely by its worst possible outcomes. But for such a benevolent view to be justified, the potential benefits need to be also clear.