It doesn’t have to be only symbolic, the capabilities of the current models have the potential to blow a lot of locked-down hardware and software wide open. Proprietary firmware can be decompiled and reverse engineered by an LLM, sometimes in literally minutes.
I’ve been deeply sceptical about AI for a long time, but the stuff it’s doing now can’t be ignored and isn’t going away. Personally, my stance is now that we should crack open everything we can and gain back control of our stuff while tokens are still relatively cheap and the AI companies are still solvent. Or they succeed in regulating open weight models and start locking down their own models’ capabilities.
Like, wouldn’t it be fantastic if all those proprietary vendor blobs in Android got decompiled and suddenly we get drivers that allow Linux to run with full functionality on any phone? What about jailbreaking our cars and nuking all the spyware? What about turning every cloud-dependent smart device into a local-only one? There’s so much we could do.
Microsoft already changed what they are selling. Now they are renting document storage that happens to have document modification software integrated.
They long decided that owning access to the data was more leverage than the software used to edit it. Ditto for Adobe. Pretty much immediately software as a service encouraged “don’t worry about ever saving/managing your data” and it wasn’t about user convenience…
I remember a large company picking MS over Google Docs, because at least at the time, MS proudly advertised that you could show up with a wagon full of HDDs at their data centre and get your stored stuff. Although, a lot of enshittification happened since then.
Providers like MS at least should have figured out that the hypothetical ability to take your data “to go” is important, but nothing they need to worry about being actually used too much, especially in businesses.
One is the anxiety over screwing up and losing your data when you solely manage it. So huge pressure to use “a” reputable company as a steward of the data.
Another is that the user and the spend are disconnected in business scenarios. If attaching a ‘cloud’ document to something in the app is two clicks, but 4 clicks to do the same from desktop, then the users will want to just stick to the cloud to save them a few clicks at least. They will demand their IT provide microsoft solutions and the IT will shrug and say “well, everyone gets microsoft solutions”. Back in the day my company tried to split the difference by purchasing perpetual licenses only for every third edition. Now Microsoft has made that just not viable so you either just pay for as long as you use it or you go elsewhere.
It’s also why I don’t think any of the providers are actually trying to screw up desktop component prices for fear of local models ruining their day. The tech market has shown they actively jump at the chance to surrender their flexibility to providers, no need to worry about them suddenly deciding to in-house things.
Except Claude shat them out in record time which means they’re likely virtually unmaintainable.
And probably burned half of the Amazon forrest to do so. What the hell.
I mean, I’m kind of for it not as a surface level practical solution, but as a symbolic fighting back against the big guys.
Like, if AI is going to make the worker valueless why not use it to make the products of rent-seeking software giants useless as well?
It doesn’t have to be only symbolic, the capabilities of the current models have the potential to blow a lot of locked-down hardware and software wide open. Proprietary firmware can be decompiled and reverse engineered by an LLM, sometimes in literally minutes.
I’ve been deeply sceptical about AI for a long time, but the stuff it’s doing now can’t be ignored and isn’t going away. Personally, my stance is now that we should crack open everything we can and gain back control of our stuff while tokens are still relatively cheap and the AI companies are still solvent. Or they succeed in regulating open weight models and start locking down their own models’ capabilities.
Like, wouldn’t it be fantastic if all those proprietary vendor blobs in Android got decompiled and suddenly we get drivers that allow Linux to run with full functionality on any phone? What about jailbreaking our cars and nuking all the spyware? What about turning every cloud-dependent smart device into a local-only one? There’s so much we could do.
Microsoft already changed what they are selling. Now they are renting document storage that happens to have document modification software integrated.
They long decided that owning access to the data was more leverage than the software used to edit it. Ditto for Adobe. Pretty much immediately software as a service encouraged “don’t worry about ever saving/managing your data” and it wasn’t about user convenience…
I remember a large company picking MS over Google Docs, because at least at the time, MS proudly advertised that you could show up with a wagon full of HDDs at their data centre and get your stored stuff. Although, a lot of enshittification happened since then.
Providers like MS at least should have figured out that the hypothetical ability to take your data “to go” is important, but nothing they need to worry about being actually used too much, especially in businesses.
One is the anxiety over screwing up and losing your data when you solely manage it. So huge pressure to use “a” reputable company as a steward of the data.
Another is that the user and the spend are disconnected in business scenarios. If attaching a ‘cloud’ document to something in the app is two clicks, but 4 clicks to do the same from desktop, then the users will want to just stick to the cloud to save them a few clicks at least. They will demand their IT provide microsoft solutions and the IT will shrug and say “well, everyone gets microsoft solutions”. Back in the day my company tried to split the difference by purchasing perpetual licenses only for every third edition. Now Microsoft has made that just not viable so you either just pay for as long as you use it or you go elsewhere.
It’s also why I don’t think any of the providers are actually trying to screw up desktop component prices for fear of local models ruining their day. The tech market has shown they actively jump at the chance to surrender their flexibility to providers, no need to worry about them suddenly deciding to in-house things.
I’ve been wondering when/if this thought process will gain more traction