Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it toLLMs: (enable that)Free software people: Oh no not like that
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Free software people: A major goal of free software is for individuals to be able to cause software to behave in the way they want it to
LLMs: (enable that)
Free software people: Oh no not like thatif i am honest the price of such, psychotic breaks, isn't worth the freedom of per request billing
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if i am honest the price of such, psychotic breaks, isn't worth the freedom of per request billing
@mjg59 it is a fair criticism of free software that they haven't managed to meaningfully increase people's agency over the computer
but it is a flight of fancy to suggest that extractive labor and outsourcing gives people that agency or control
even before we get to the "software that kills teenagers" part of the faustian pact
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@jenesuispasgoth @mjg59
Some people think they can recycle FOSS from one licence to another using LLM, such as GPL2 to MIT or whatever. They are IP thieves.
All FOSS code, any so called copyleft licence, is actually copyright. Public domain code is a special case and in reality rare for anything written in the last 50 years. All of AT&T UNIX is still copyright.
Even programs or OS where the source has been made public with limitation for use is mostly still some sort of copyright.@raymaccarthy @jenesuispasgoth @mjg59 I don't much like the answer, but the assessment in the US seems to be that, yes, this laundering works if the new code is different enough.
If you sidestep the question of whether the output can be copyrighted (such as chardet did in the end) and you rename it, you're probably "good".
(Again. Me no like. And maybe different in the EU.) -
@seanfurey @mjg59 lmao. Assuming a total of 20 million software developers world-wide, what is the problem with firing 5-10 million people in the span of 1-2 years? You really can't think of any problem with this except the blatant copyright violations and disastrous environmental impact? Those are people my guy, they and their families need food, shelter, healthcare, and people can't just choose a new craft, let alone while competing with a couple of million in the same situation...
I'm one of them. And it does worry me.
And at the same time, I think that a lot of dock workers lost their jobs when shipping became containerised. Do I think that shouldn't have happened? Do I think software engineering is different? I don't know, I'm trying to work it out.
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My question was less about "these two issues are the only problems" than "let's pretend these two issues don't exist and look at the job issue on its own". Because of the plagiarism/slop/environment issues are ever "resolved" the job question will remain.
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Clearly my most unpopular thread ever, so let me add a clarification: submitting LLM generated code you don't understand to an upstream project is absolute bullshit and you should never do that. Having an LLM turn an existing codebase into something that meets your local needs? Do it. The code may be awful, it may break stuff you don't care about, and that's what all my early patches to free software looked like. It's ok to solve your problem locally.
@mjg59 I don't think your points in this thread are wrong, but I'm going to gently, firmly disagree with you about the universality of your statements.
I program for many reasons, but a core reason why I enjoy it so much is that I learn new things about the problem space during the process. I treasure that. I go back to restructure my code after it works to try to share this process of discovery & learning with folks who might read my code later.
LLM coding for effect only ignores this.
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@seanfurey @petko @mjg59 The smarter companies strive for augmentation rather than replacement. Only those who seek excuses for bad cash flow or those who genuinely have no idea what to do with higher productivity do.
That said, I do think there is an unbelievable number of those. Plus it widens the gap of those who can benefit the most, and those who can't.
The ethical concerns are "mostly" in the supply chain and the fascists selling the systems today.
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@raymaccarthy @jenesuispasgoth @mjg59 I don't much like the answer, but the assessment in the US seems to be that, yes, this laundering works if the new code is different enough.
If you sidestep the question of whether the output can be copyrighted (such as chardet did in the end) and you rename it, you're probably "good".
(Again. Me no like. And maybe different in the EU.)@larsmb @jenesuispasgoth @mjg59
The US is the country that on the one hand has the draconian DMCA (unfair) and on the other hand said it's fine for Google to entirely scan copyright works (a totally paid for decision that isn't "fair use").
The USPTO broken since Edison.It's not a clean room re-implementation. It's automated plagiarism. I can do that in Perl or WP to a novel changing places and people. Copyright violation.
Even if you also manually transpose to a different era it might be. -
@mjg59 I don't think your points in this thread are wrong, but I'm going to gently, firmly disagree with you about the universality of your statements.
I program for many reasons, but a core reason why I enjoy it so much is that I learn new things about the problem space during the process. I treasure that. I go back to restructure my code after it works to try to share this process of discovery & learning with folks who might read my code later.
LLM coding for effect only ignores this.
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@mjg59 I'm not opposed to the existence of code-for-effect, and I'm not even opposed to using such software, but it's not what I want, care about, or treasure. I treasure code written for readers and contributors first.
I want there to be more of this kind of code in the world. And I don't think it's a zero-sum game: there can be more rich code _and_ more code-for-effect. They're both fine.
I just don't think I'm OK with the statement that code-for-effect is the only kind that matters.
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@seanfurey I assume you're referring to the ISO containers. Can you please check how long did it take to switch to predominantly containerized shipping, and was it two years? Because this is the chief issue -- short-sighted companies WILL fire en-masse not leaving time for people to re-specialise/transition safely and peacefully to a new craft.
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@mjg59 but wait, there's more
What if you're not renowned security expert and open-source celebrity @mjg59 (that currently works at nvidia btw, profiting from the LLM boom, sorry) but just some guy trying to make ends meet doing some coding?...
Now you get an LLM mandate from your company that comes with the implication that 'either you boost your productivity with 80% or we fire you and contract a cheap prompter in your place'...
Mmm steady on... at least in his first part he has a good point (didn't read the rest). To the extent that LLMs push FOSS forward, they are good. His point can stand or keel over without having to bash him over the head with his supposed motivation.
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@larsmb @jenesuispasgoth @mjg59
The US is the country that on the one hand has the draconian DMCA (unfair) and on the other hand said it's fine for Google to entirely scan copyright works (a totally paid for decision that isn't "fair use").
The USPTO broken since Edison.It's not a clean room re-implementation. It's automated plagiarism. I can do that in Perl or WP to a novel changing places and people. Copyright violation.
Even if you also manually transpose to a different era it might be.@raymaccarthy @jenesuispasgoth @mjg59 I think it morally is a copyright violation too.
I also have come to the conclusion (including an explanation by Fontana in the chardet issue) that unless you can identify persistent copyrightable expression from prior art, your new work isn't a violation.
If you don't care whether it's copyrightable, you're probably in the clear.
Exposure is a problem if you're under NDA or trade secrets are involved, yes. Or maybe patents.
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@seanfurey I assume you're referring to the ISO containers. Can you please check how long did it take to switch to predominantly containerized shipping, and was it two years? Because this is the chief issue -- short-sighted companies WILL fire en-masse not leaving time for people to re-specialise/transition safely and peacefully to a new craft.
I imagine not, although I have no idea.
I think that's less of a question of " is there a fundamental problem with replacing programmers with llms?", more " if it happens, would it happen quicker than people can adapt to?".
Both are valid questions, they're slightly independent I think.
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Look, coders, we are not writers. There's no way to turn "increment this variable" into life changing prose. The creativity exists outside the code. It always has done and it always will do. Let it go.
@mjg59 no
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@barnoid Huh interesting, that's really not my experience of writing code - I sit down with a formed idea of what needs to happen and then I smash keys until it's there. And now I'm curious whether there's a real disconnect between with different models of coding.
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@mjg59 That said, I don't object to LLMs. With what I do, their use is niche, and I rarely need them, but they're useful for spitting out unimportant code in some unwieldy framework like Vue/JS/HTML.
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When I write code I am turning a creative idea into a mechanical embodiment of that idea. I am not creating beauty. Every line of code I write is a copy of another line of code I've read somewhere before, lightly modified to meet my needs. My code is not intended to evoke emotion. It does not change people think about the world. The idea→code pipeline in my head is not obviously distinguishable from the prompt->code process in an LLM
@mjg59 Yeh I agree; I think some people only saw LLMs maybe 3 years ago and they were pretty stupid at the time just regurgitating junk and haven't noticed the modern stuff is actually understanding the code in some cases; well, at least as well as an intern and frequently better.
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I’ve heard this argument before and I disagree with it. My goal for Free Software is to enable users, but that requires users have agency. Users being able to modify code to do what they want? Great! Users being given a black box that will modify their code in a way that might do what they want but will fail in unpredictable ways, without giving them any mechanism to build a mental model of those failure modes? Terrible!
I am not a carpenter but I have an electric screwdriver. It’s great. It lets me turn screws with much less effort than a manual one. There are a bunch of places where it doesn’t work, but that’s fine, I can understand those and use the harder-to-use tool in places where it won’t work. I can build a mental model of when not to use it and why it doesn’t work and how it will fail. I love building the software equivalent of this, things that let end users change code in ways I didn’t anticipate.
But LLM coding is not like this. It’s like a nail gun that has a 1% chance of firing backwards. 99% of the time, it’s much easier than using a hammer. 1% of the time you lose an eye. And you have no way of knowing which it will be. The same prompt, given to the same model, two days in a row, may give you a program that does what you want one time and a program that looks like it does what you want but silently corrupts your data the next time.
That’s not empowering users, that’s removing agency from users. Tools that empower users are ones that make it easy for users to build a (nicely abstracted, ignoring details that are irrelevant to them) mental model of how the system works and therefor the ability to change it in precise ways. Tools that remove agency from users take their ability to reason about how systems work and how to effect precise change.
I have zero interest in enabling tools that remove agency from users.
@david_chisnall @mjg59 I don't think AI is ready to empower non-programmers to build whatever they want... yet. I think they might have the potential to do so in the future, though, as the technology improves.
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Clearly my most unpopular thread ever, so let me add a clarification: submitting LLM generated code you don't understand to an upstream project is absolute bullshit and you should never do that. Having an LLM turn an existing codebase into something that meets your local needs? Do it. The code may be awful, it may break stuff you don't care about, and that's what all my early patches to free software looked like. It's ok to solve your problem locally.
@mjg59 years of reputation thrown away on a single thread: a masterclass
