> DeepSeek demonstrated big models could be trained very easily for a modest budget It might require an ability to train on other commercial model output (whic

> DeepSeek demonstrated big models could be trained very easily for a modest budget It might require an ability to train on other commercial model output (which they certainly will erect barriers to), and based on what I heard from people using LLMs for programming DS is substantially worse. > Consider it differently: how much would it cost to use an LLM to reproduce all of Linux? I’d stop you there. The point I raised is about something qualitatively very novel, not reproducing an already existing thing. > AI is economically preferable to feeding a human who is doing it for free As FOSS shows, humans would do it for free, for enjoyment/credit/recognition/self actualization/common good; but this presumes that those humans have jobs that otherwise pay the bills (arguably threatened by the technology we are discussing, as you note yourself), and some guarantees that it will be for common good rather than unpaid ghost labour for corporations. Note that so far it worked OK because what companies in “AI” space have done is a blitzkrieg attack: not bothering to slow down to ask for consent and clear licensing (which would have made more people aware of what’s going on), armed from get go with massive scraping capabilities and billions of USD in GPU power. If the consequences I foresee kick in—people having been burned cease publishing original work of high quality for the models to be trained on, more and more barriers are erected to curb bot traffic (the number of captchas I see has skyrocketed in the past couple of years), etc.—the end result will be 1) degrading models and 2) permanently eroded FOSS. This might suit some commercial interests who see copyleft as some sort of virus, but I just struggle to see how it plays out well for public interest beyond short term.