Comment by rfrey
6 days ago
That's exactly the point, it's hard to see how someone could hold that view and pillory AI companies for slurping up proprietary code.
You probably don't have those views. But I think Thomas' point is that the profession as a whole has been crying "information wants to be free" for so many years, when what they meant was "information I don't want to pay for wants to be free" - and the hostile response to AI training on private data underlines that.
Because it's rules for us and not for them. If I take Microsoft's code and "transform" it I get sued. If Microsoft takes everyone else's code and "transforms" it (and sells it back to us) well, that's just business, pal. Thomas's argument is completely missing this point.
EDIT to add, I said this more completely a while ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34381996