"Code was never the hard part" is an insult to all programmers

cross-posted from: programming.dev/post/54810980

blog.senko.net/code-was-never-the-hard-part-is-an-insult-to-all-programmers

Whoever you are, don’t outsource your understanding, judgement, empathy and taste to AI. Don’t abdicate your responsibility. Don’t be a meat proxy.

By expanding the ability to program to people without the knowledge of how that code works in the first place, it’s naive to expect that most uses of AI in programming will be informed uses by senior developers able to recognize errors and security flaws.

Such a pro-AI position also ignores the enormous amount of theft that these tools are built on.

Such a pro-AI position also ignores the enormous amount of theft that these tools are built on.

Or, less likely, it could be that person knows and just doesn't care. I certainly don't because I believe intellectual property is bullshit.

It’s one thing for individuals (particularly those without the means of paying) to pirate content that its original creators have already been compensated for and now exists to milk money for an IP holder for a century; it’s another matter entirely when AI companies with multi-billion dollar valuations scour the internet for content to include in their models to then profit from without permission from or compensation to the millions of people whose work they depend on.

Yeah that's the thing: I don't believe it's wrong to profit from people's content without their permission, because I don't believe they own that content after they share it with humanity and I absolutely don't believe they should get to enforce that "ownership" via state violence. Everyone should get to use anything they want in derivative works, whether for profit or not. The fact that this could plausibly affect people's livelihoods (but IMO wouldn't; if there were significant profits in IP "theft" corporations would already be doing it) is a failure of capitalism and frankly not the reproducer's business.

The entire AI industry is built on IP theft; even if you don’t believe in IP ownership, companies like OpenAI and Anthropic rely on their ability to scrape the internet for content, with only largest of publishers having the resources to sue for anything in return.

So long as copyright is being enforced at the individual level for consumers, large corporations shouldn’t be allowed to get away with infringing on it for profit.