I understand the sentiment. It’s frustrating knowing that every word you write and every line of code you put on the internet is going to be used to train models.
This post reminded me of the spirited discussion regarding Mark Pilgrim’s deletion of his website back in the day.
This resonates with me. I feel like the world is worse off for it, but I don’t see a solution for it.
The advent of Turing-test-passing AI was such an enormous mistake. There’s no shortage of people who want to do creative, intellectual work. People even do it in their spare time and give the product away. They’re trying to automate the wrong kinds of jobs.
Wait until the printing press arrives, all the scribe monks will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the cotton gin arrives, all the hand weavers will become jobless and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the computer arrives, people will become obsolete and no one will have experience anymore.
Wait until the steam engine, automobiles, planes, calculators, telephones, bla bla
“Slippery slope” arguments like these assume that once a technology introduces a specific risk, society lacks the agency to create counter-measures, new norms, or alternative uses for that technology.
History shows that when a “slope” appears, regulation steps in, technology evolves to solve the problem, or the culture shifts to reinterpret the tool.
In almost every case, the feared “bottom” of the slope was never reached because humans constantly built ramps or bridges along the way.
Turns out the wrong kinds of jobs are easier to automate. But once we get those done away with, it’s a lot of more labour in physical jobs and we can drive those costs down. Great, eh?
Tbf we’ll need to automate everything we can because we aren’t producing enough kids to keep this upside down pyramid going for much longer unfortunately. By we, I mean most of the developed world, and the developing world will get there in a few decades too.
Just to add an analysis of UN numbers on this.
I definitely commit a lot more to my private forgejo than codeberg account anymore despite everything I do being specifically AGPL3.
