Comment by gensym
13 hours ago
I find it pretty simple:
- OSS is valuable for decentralizing power and influence
- AI as it is being developed is likely to centralize it
13 hours ago
I find it pretty simple:
- OSS is valuable for decentralizing power and influence
- AI as it is being developed is likely to centralize it
> AI as it is being developed is likely to centralize it
Depends on how you see it.
I know many people building oss, local alternatives to enterprise software for specific industries that cost thousands of dollars all thanks to AI.
If everyone can produce software now and at a much complex and bigger scale, it's much easier to create decentralized and free alternatives to long-standing closed projects.
You do understand that the above comment is talking about how the use and reliance on LLMs is what centralizes power right? It's great people can build these tools, but if the means to build these tools are controlled by three central companies where does that leave us?
That would imply that there will never be an adequate open weights coding model. That might be true, but seems unlikely.
I agree with you. One counterargument is that producing software was never a path to adoption unless you had distribution and the big companies (OpenAI, Anthropic) have distribution on a scale that individuals will not.
> - OSS is valuable for decentralizing power and influence
That was the intention and hope, but I think the past twenty years has shown that it largely had the opposite effect.
Let's say I write some useful library and open source it.
Joe Small Business Owner uses it in his application. It makes his app more useful and he makes an extra $100,000 from his 1,000 users.
Meanwhile Alice Giant Corporate CEO uses it in her application. It makes her app more useful by exactly the same amount, but because she has a million users, now she's a billion dollars richer.
If you assume that open source provides additive value, then giving it to everyone freely will generally have an equalizing effect. Those with the least existing wealth will find that additive value more impactful than someone who is already rich. Giving a poor person $10,000 can change their life. Give it to Jeff Bezos and it won't even change his dinner plans.
But if you consider that open source provides multiplicative value, then giving it to everyone is effectively a force multiplier for their existing power.
In practice, it's probably somewhere between the two. But when you consider how highly iterative systems are, even a slight multiplicative effect means that over time it's mostly enriching the rich.
Seven of the ten richest people in the world got there from tech [1]. If the goal of open source was to lead to less inequality, it's clearly not working, or at least not working well enough to counter other forces trending towards inequality.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires
> AI as it is being developed is likely to centralize it
The access to AI is centralized, but the ability to generate code and customized tools on demand for whatever personal project you have certainly democratizes Software.
And even though open source models are a year behind, they address your remaining criticism about the AI being centralized.
AI is written by a for profit company whose long term objective is more profit.
I’m not against AI, I’m against the inevitable enshittification which will screw us all over, one way or another.