It’s more like you spend 4 years developing a product you’re passionate about. This product will gain you the respect of all your colleagues and either earn you money directly or lead to great career advancements. Then OpenAI takes it, changes the colour scheme, finishes the login flow and claims the whole thing as their own.
Not only would it piss you off but it would also misrepresent what OpenAIs models are capable of.
If I have infinite money to progress whatever problem solution I want but I always wait until I have an unfair advantage to get credit for whatever problem was just at the brink of a breakthrough anyway by sniping the last steps.
Am I actually doing a good thing or would it be better to let it run it's natural course and spend the money somewhere it's actually needed?
It's partly empathy with the person who did the work and had it stolen, in a field where the main thing people work for is credit. Maths isn't well paid, and doesn't make things that millions of people directly use.
It's also systemic, it cuts off the supply of results, if there is no reward any more for getting a result, the pipeline of maths will stop. It is the snake eating itself, which has a bad impact for all of us.
We love to do work that is useful and valuable to others, and we often form our identities around this. But identities are in large part socially constructed, so many of us need the recognition of others for our contribution. And it can be very painful when we perceive that the credit for our life's work got "stolen". Naturally, we fight against this. There's nothing shameful there. Sure, you can hold onto an ideal of egoless service. There's nothing wrong with that, either. But it's misanthropic to pass such harsh judgment on people for behaving in such a normal and natural manner.
Identity isn't the question. Eating is the question. If you can't come up with things you don't eat. If you come up with 90% of things and some overarching parasitic process comes in, puts in the 10%, and now they get 100% and you get 0%, you don't eat.
The problem is that AI is capital, and having to rent AI to keep up when it can just steal your mostly done work is something somehow even lower than wage-labor. They can use your own risked investment (the cash you paid to work) to get out in front of you and take credit.
I have yet to trust LLMs with anything important that can be capitalized on. I only use it to work on projects that if they stole and expanded on them, I'd actually be happy to see.
If, as you say, it doesn't matter that the AI company gets praise for somebody else's discovery, then it also wouldn't matter if the praise went to the academic. You apparently resent the academic for seeking praise instead of being content with anonymously advancing human knowledge, but you don't resent the AI company seeking praise while leaching off the academic.
And I could dedicate my life to helping feed starving kids all across the globe. And then comes along this tool (a lockpick) and I use it, it accelerates my progress to actually getting money to fulfill my dream. If you leave your ego and identity aside, which of course is hard for you, wouldn't you be glad that I stole your money to feed starving kids?
An academic's whole career is built on credit assignment for research breakthroughs. If someone else takes the credit, you lose. This is fundamentally different from a builder. You create things, solve problems and get paid for that instance. Nobody cares you 'invented' the blueprint for that building method. Your job is to instantiate. 100 Contractors can be building instance the exact same building somewhere else, it would not affect you. Most of IT builders are paid for what is basically 2 or 3 tier CRUD.
Downvotes might work as an abuse sponge, absorbing the impulse to make personal attacks. Other than that possible advantage, the downvote functionality seems contradictory to the concept of a discussion forum, I agree.
If these accusation are true
It’s more like you spend 4 years developing a product you’re passionate about. This product will gain you the respect of all your colleagues and either earn you money directly or lead to great career advancements. Then OpenAI takes it, changes the colour scheme, finishes the login flow and claims the whole thing as their own.
Not only would it piss you off but it would also misrepresent what OpenAIs models are capable of.
Let's turn this question around.
If I have infinite money to progress whatever problem solution I want but I always wait until I have an unfair advantage to get credit for whatever problem was just at the brink of a breakthrough anyway by sniping the last steps. Am I actually doing a good thing or would it be better to let it run it's natural course and spend the money somewhere it's actually needed?
Sort of like Apple takes validated market products and snipes the last steps to an actual good UX (at least in theory)?
You are probably not too far off given that Apple sometimes releases their own version of a product that a developer established on their platform
The thing is, everyone knows that Apple does that and Apple doesn't care if people have a beef with them.
It's partly empathy with the person who did the work and had it stolen, in a field where the main thing people work for is credit. Maths isn't well paid, and doesn't make things that millions of people directly use.
It's also systemic, it cuts off the supply of results, if there is no reward any more for getting a result, the pipeline of maths will stop. It is the snake eating itself, which has a bad impact for all of us.
We love to do work that is useful and valuable to others, and we often form our identities around this. But identities are in large part socially constructed, so many of us need the recognition of others for our contribution. And it can be very painful when we perceive that the credit for our life's work got "stolen". Naturally, we fight against this. There's nothing shameful there. Sure, you can hold onto an ideal of egoless service. There's nothing wrong with that, either. But it's misanthropic to pass such harsh judgment on people for behaving in such a normal and natural manner.
Identity isn't the question. Eating is the question. If you can't come up with things you don't eat. If you come up with 90% of things and some overarching parasitic process comes in, puts in the 10%, and now they get 100% and you get 0%, you don't eat.
The problem is that AI is capital, and having to rent AI to keep up when it can just steal your mostly done work is something somehow even lower than wage-labor. They can use your own risked investment (the cash you paid to work) to get out in front of you and take credit.
I have yet to trust LLMs with anything important that can be capitalized on. I only use it to work on projects that if they stole and expanded on them, I'd actually be happy to see.
If, as you say, it doesn't matter that the AI company gets praise for somebody else's discovery, then it also wouldn't matter if the praise went to the academic. You apparently resent the academic for seeking praise instead of being content with anonymously advancing human knowledge, but you don't resent the AI company seeking praise while leaching off the academic.
I suspect in your ideology you're conflating things like copyright and patents, with the separate issue of Attribution.
And I could dedicate my life to helping feed starving kids all across the globe. And then comes along this tool (a lockpick) and I use it, it accelerates my progress to actually getting money to fulfill my dream. If you leave your ego and identity aside, which of course is hard for you, wouldn't you be glad that I stole your money to feed starving kids?
An academic's whole career is built on credit assignment for research breakthroughs. If someone else takes the credit, you lose. This is fundamentally different from a builder. You create things, solve problems and get paid for that instance. Nobody cares you 'invented' the blueprint for that building method. Your job is to instantiate. 100 Contractors can be building instance the exact same building somewhere else, it would not affect you. Most of IT builders are paid for what is basically 2 or 3 tier CRUD.
HN loves drive-by downvotes. It's a real shame.
Downvotes might work as an abuse sponge, absorbing the impulse to make personal attacks. Other than that possible advantage, the downvote functionality seems contradictory to the concept of a discussion forum, I agree.
I stand by what I said, and screw you.