Yeah the AI companies slurped up all our work and are now selling it back to us in the form of trained LLMs.

What's the point of contributing to OSS if anyone can just LLM wash your work knowingly or unknowingly? You won't even get credit. Heck, you won't even know if anyone is using it!

But then what if you have a larger project than a library. Do all the leg work figuring out what works and what doesn't. What users like. Then anyone can just point an LLM at it and clone it for $50? Fun.

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larodi 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

When I forecasted open-source is going down because nobody wants to expose himself only to be robbed off credit and authorship, he did not initially understand what the claim was. Two years now.

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runarberg 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Indeed. This whole LLM has been a planetary scale theft of labor. They stole our labor and are now leasing it back to us as rent-seeking on the means of production.

Those of us who refuse to use that stolen labor are loosing our jobs, fast.

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Rapzid 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

It's not even limited to software engineering.

I'm sure word is getting around of MBAs and etc getting access to GitLab and using AI to make python apps. Look, you don't need devs anymore?

Okay, but wouldn't a software engineer be better at that? "No, because I'm an SME, I know finance!". Right, but the LLM knows finance?

A year ago these tools were assistants, copilots, but know.. It's clear if the pace doesn't plateau or slow greatly we are headed towards replacement of massive swaths of knowledge workers.

And it risks completely destroying our society due to the economic fallout from mass unemployment..

	▲	astrange 3 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		“If you want a simple model for predicting the unemployment rate in the United States over the next few years, here it is: It will be what [Alan] Greenspan wants it to be, plus or minus a random error reflecting the fact that he is not quite God.” -- Paul Krugman, 1997 Note this does not say "it will decrease if we suddenly invent new productivity technologies".
	▲	lowbloodsugar 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Jokes on them. You don’t need MBAs any more. You just need the cash or a credit line.

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skybrian 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If you mean publishing open source code, they didn’t steal it. We gave it away. Generosity has always been vulnerable to “exploitation,” but some of apparently understood that risk better than others.

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Rapzid 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

My jumping off point was OSS, but I was actually talking about the entirety of human knowledge being used to make a few people insanely rich while sending everyone else who made the LLM training possible to the bread line.

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runarberg 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

No, I reject this framing. Copyright violations are orthogonal to labor theft. Labor theft can include copyright violation, but it doesn’t have to. My MIT licensed code may not have been violated (it probably was though; where is the copy of the notice that my license requires?) but my labor was for sure stolen.

I am fine with people using my work, copying my source code, and distributing derivative work. I am not fine with AI companies stealing everyone’s work and renting it back to us.

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skybrian 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Stealing labor itself isn’t actually a thing. Your wages could be stolen, except - what wages? Maybe the output from your labor could be stolen, but not if nothing material was lost. If you can’t point to a specific intellectual property violation, you have no case.

Did they steal Wikipedia? Wikipedia is still there.

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runarberg an hour ago | parent [-]

Stealing my labor means that I do all the work, and they take all the profit.

This would be true even if I signed a contract stating that I give all my labor away for free to my exploiter. You cannot sign away your rights like that, and my exploiter is not allowed to abuse my goodwill this way.

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skybrian 43 minutes ago | parent [-]

It sounds like you're making a claim to someone else's profits with a very thin rationale for why you had anything to do with it. Basically, claiming something that never was yours and has next to nothing to do with anything you worked on.

	▲	runarberg 37 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		My labor was mine. Even the worst capitalist ideologues admit that workers own their own labor and the sell it to their employer for wages. You are basically arguing in feudalism. My labor belonged to my landlord and they had full right to take all the profit for them selves.

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atomicUpdate an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

You already valued your own labor at zero by giving it away for free. How is taking something you give away for free suddenly considered "stealing"?

	▲	runarberg an hour ago \| parent [-]
		The same way that Fitzcarraldo stole the labor of the Amazon Indians when they moved the ship over the mountain in order to profit from the rubber. Previously when I licensed my code with a liberal license I got something back, credit, contributions, connections, job opportunities, etc. The AI companies stole my labor, then they demanded I pay them, and finally they took my job.

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ThrowawayR2 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

That was the point of FOSS and copyleft: the abolition of copyright on code allowing anyone to take code from any place to use however they please.

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saurik 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

The entire concept of copyleft and free software depended on copyright: it isn't "take my code and do what you will", it is "here is a very explicit contract that demands you credit my work and even requires you to contribute back in return for my efforts". And like, maybe a world with no copyright at all is better! But that isn't the world we are in: it is no more legal for you to have an AI read my code and then port it into your codebase (which could involve training as an intermediate step or could merely involve the AI searching for it and loading it into its context) than would be for you to directly read my code and port it into your codebase or even for you to utilize a deterministic tool to read my code and port it into your codebase; you only get to do those things if you retain my license on the result and abide by its terms.

FWIW, many of us who do open source would also find that hypothetical world in which the idea of copyright is abolished rather enticing... but you pretending that is this current world whenever you want to steal our code whilst copyright still paints our interests in using and altering the code from companies that have always been in fear of our community and our licenses (Apple, Microsoft, etc.) as theft is not merely a bit shitty... it is kind of evil/cruel.

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tmtvl 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Yeah, I never contributed to FOSS to get credit; I contributed because I wanted something improved which I thought was not very good and thought that sharing the improvements with the world would be good (sharing is caring, after all). From a Free Software perspective, I actually quite like that Generative AI allows people to create the software they want and adapt it to their wants and needs. Free Software is about freedom, after all (free as in free speech). Unfortunate GAI tends to be quite resource intensive, which is bad; but local models are getting better all the time, so hopefully eventually anyone can run a GAI model on their own computer and have it create any and all software they want.

It's a bit like Bob Ross' Joy of Painting: if everyone can paint then anyone can make any painting they want to see.

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astrange 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Copyleft comes with restrictions on code - you have to keep it public. It's the BSD licenses that basically don't.

	▲	ThrowawayR2 41 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		The end goal is not adoption of FOSS licenses, the end goal was the Four Freedoms ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Free_Software_Definition#T... ) - The freedom to run the program as you wish, for any purpose (freedom 0). - The freedom to study how the program works, and change it to make it do what you wish (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this. - The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help others (freedom 2). - The freedom to distribute copies of your modified versions to others (freedom 3). By doing this you can give the whole community a chance to benefit from your changes. Access to the source code is a precondition for this. Note that it "preserve licenses" and "preserve attribution" are very much not in that list. Well, the Four Freedoms are what these AI doohickeys enable by being able to in theory reverse engineer or replicate any code, making all code effectively "public", and to bypass any copyright issues around distribution. The fact that AI blowing away the existence of proprietary code also blows away the licenses of FOSS licensed code is a harmless side effect of getting to the Four Freedoms, which was the Free Software goal all along. If any of this is surprising, then you didn't understand what you signed up for. The AI monkey's paw has curled and you've got what you asked for, sort of.