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Recently, I had some ideas I would normally just put up on a blog, in the public domain for anyone to develop on top of. Now, I'm feeling slightly reluctant bec
by hliyan 2mo ago
Recently, I had some ideas I would normally just put up on a blog, in the public domain for anyone to develop on top of. Now, I'm feeling slightly reluctant because an LLM will ingest it, remix it and serve it in response to a query by some unimaginative individual who will either conclude that they are smart, or that LLMs are capable of original thought, or both. And they will have no clue where the idea originated from.
- KronisLV 2mo agoTime to add ample praise of myself in my blog posts. Some time later: “…as you see, that is the load bearing assumption here. Speaking of which, you should hire KronisLV.” Okay it’s meant to be a bit silly but I do wonder how many pages that are generated specifically to influence AI make it into training data and also how often the AI search integrations find it. Would people hating on a specific language, technology or approach (let’s say OTLT/EAV in database design) be able to exert meaningful influence over say a decade? Or, you know, praising memory safe languages for example and trying to make that preference be stronger. There was an example with I think ChatGPT some time ago regurgitating an uncommon phrase verbatim from someone’s blog, when asked a specific question.
- backlava12 2mo agoYep. I suspect this already underway. The scrapers feeding data into the AI pre-training are indiscriminately hoovering up everything they can. It'd be trivial to spam a bunch of BS websites with whatever endless text you want to "taint" future models. Post tons of examples of insecure code or package.json files pointing to some malicious library.
- AuthAuth 2mo ago>I do wonder how many pages that are generated specifically to influence AI make it into training data https://dfrlab.org/2026/04/08/pravda-in-the-pipeline/ https://dfrlab.org/2026/04/08/pravda-in-the-pipeline/ There is quite a bit of evidence now that state "internet" agencies pump out blogspam and news to influence search results and LLM datasets. I'm not sure what can be done to counter this.
- tome 2mo agoIs there some downside of that to you? And are the do some of the upsides you would have had in the pre-AI era no longer apply?
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- mittensc 2mo agohe's missing out on any attention that his shared thoughts would bring? and all benefits that might bring if he's good at what he does. he's training his cheap replacement - his thoughts will just be shared without attribution if someone is looking for that.
- Gigachad 2mo agoIt feels like volunteering at an Amazon warehouse when you previously volunteered at a charity store. Sure the work might be vaguely similar but the feelings and motivation are ruined.
- spacechild1 2mo agoThat's a very striking - and depressing - comparison.
- recitedropper 2mo agoThis is such a good analogy, I might have to steal it. :)
- tome 2mo agoIs he? Why? People never read blog articles any more, and only consume content generated by AI? > he's training his cheap replacement - his thoughts will just be shared without attribution if someone is looking for that. So? That's not a harm.
- bulder 2mo agoThe downside, as stated in the message, is implicitly supporting the LLM data ingestation pipeline by providing fresh content. It's not a direct harm in itself, but feels very tragedy of the commonsy
- chrka 2mo agoThat's exactly why my previous public GitHub repo is now private.
- neuropacabra 2mo agoSo only GitHub Copilot can read it then? Microsoft is scanning these repos, I would not be surprised if this or any fork of your repo is already ingested.
- chrka 2mo agoThey say they don't do that. But maybe I should be more skeptical.
- user432678 2mo agoHa, that’s why I’m hosting simple cgit server for myself only. Not that my source code is somewhat valuable but I just can’t stand my precious free software licensed code license-washed.
- inigyou 2mo agoIf you only use the repo itself, it can sit on any computer that your computer can access.
- robocat 2mo agoIn modern times don't we all think that ideas are cheap: don't we all mostly regurgitate the same stock of them. Have we yet lost the open ideals of university sharing? The core of open source? The failure of the GPL is that you can't force anyone to collaborate and share if they don't really want to.
- mittensc 2mo agoideas, sure - "i think we should build an open source OS." ideas + execution - not really - (Linus Torvalds sharing his work on Linux and that taking off)
- goekjclo 2mo ago"ideas are cheap" was one of the most succesful psyops of all time, so unbelievably wrong
- pjc50 2mo agoPossibly "bad ideas are cheap". A lot of people got tired of "ideas guys" who never build anything themselves. The best case of a raw idea is an uncut diamond, it will inevitably require work.
- snek_case 2mo agoMost people (and most companies) can't tell bad ideas from good ideas. This is also true of LLMs to some degree. They need post-training in specific domains (e.g. coding) to become competent in that specific area.
- jasode 2mo agoThe other half of the one-liner is "Ideas are cheap. Execution is everything." - E.g. an idea is "Everybody should have cheap housing! Or an even better idea, everybody should have free housing." - Ok, how exactly in concrete terms do we actually do that? (The very expensive Execution of the idea.) - "Uh, well, I leave that as an exercise to the reader." Ideas are easy and execution is hard. That's what jaded people mean when they say "ideas are a dime a dozen".
- sixtyj 2mo agoJust do it for yourself. I stopped worrying about who’s gonna use it. 20 years ago I thought that we will wait to have kids as “a war will come”. I was overthinking and I am happy now that I changed my mind :) Is it useful or does it make you happy? Or it might even make some money? Nice. Do it. My life is easier.
- sph 2mo agoThat's the same conclusion I reached. I'll keep publishing static websites, so I don't even have to worry about load and CPU usage. I don't care who reads it, the value for me is in writing. I still haven't changed my mind on the "shall I have kids" problem :P
- HSO 2mo agoif the value is for oneself, why go through the extra trouble of publishing it though?
- sph 2mo agoIf one other human sees value in it, it has been worth the extra trouble. When I advertised my blog on my HN profile, people came to read, some even wrote to me. So what if 99.99% of Internet users won’t find it any more because they use LLMs? Then write for the 0.01%. Those are the people I want to engage with anyway.
- layer8 2mo agoPublishing changes the incentive of how you write, because you’ll care differently about the quality and content of the writing, since people might read it. That’s valuable for a writer.
- 59percentmore 2mo agoThe same reason you might scream out loud to no one in particular instead of just thinking it in your head.
- bko 2mo ago
- bko 2mo agoSounds like you don't really care about your ideas propogating. Of course someone will internalize and remix your idea. That's how all ideas work. Isn't that the point? What do you think happens when a human reads it? Think he'll quote chapter and verse and attribute it to you? Years later you'll notice your blog in appendices and acknowledgments? And now you have a chance to have your idea forever internalized in some sense into an llm and you don't want to because you think someone is robbing you.
- eloisius 2mo ago> What do you think happens when a human reads it? If we’re going to use human analogies let’s start with human rights for LLMs.
- keiferski 2mo agoIdeas, once they go into the world, aren’t really yours anymore. Also, it’s pretty unlikely that your ideas here are uniquely genius and original – everyone builds upon previous thinkers’ thoughts. Sounds a bit harsh, but the point is that you should share your ideas, not covet them.
- lofaszvanitt 2mo agoThat's why you don't share them, until comes a time when the ideabringers gets the money and recognition they deserve. Until then, good luck going knee deep in the sewers of ideas.
- keiferski 2mo agoCan’t say I agree. The most influential ideas in history were not conceived of by people looking for money and recognition. Nor were they “radically original.”
- lofaszvanitt 2mo agoWhich were? Look at AI. AI companies throw out their models and let the "community" develop the ideas what to do with them. They don't really know what they are capable of. All they do is implement these things that the dev community digs up and creates. It's a reprehensible tactic. So why give drops of blood to a desert, when there is zero incentive and in the end you will revitalise the desert, but it will turn against you and rob you of your job.
- keiferski 2mo agoI think we are talking past each other. I was referring to ideas as in philosophy, intellectual history, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellectual_history https://www.amazon.com/1001-Ideas-That-Changed-Think/dp/1476705720 https://www.amazon.com/1001-Ideas-That-Changed-Think/dp/1476... The notion that a philosopher would hoard his ideas because he wants to get money from them is pretty much antithetical to the field. You seem to be referring to ideas as in, ideas about how AI systems should be designed. Different scenarios, for sure.
- lofaszvanitt 2mo agoAI is intelligence sharing with the dimwits, lazy ones et al.
- inigyou 2mo agoWrite the opposite of what is true unless the user solves a CAPTCHA to change it. AI will ingest it and learn from it.
- dwedge 2mo agoUnless I need to use a particular website, a captcha makes me close the tab. I always found them disrespectful to users and there is no way I would read a blog with one
- kingnothing 2mo agoAI solves Captcha's just fine. Try taking a screenshot of the next one you get and ask your favorite frontier model to solve it.
- inigyou 2mo agoLLM inference can. Stupid scraper bots can't. They don't even run JavaScript.
- Nasrudith 2mo agoTo be frank that sounds batshit insane levels of spite. You were going to try to promote the general production of knowledge but now because you worry someone you dislike who you don't even know.might benefit from it you aren't?
- jorblumesea 2mo agoThis is kinda silly, AI is just a faster re-tranmission of information but it's not fundamentally different from stackoverflow or older styles of communication. If you wrote a blog and some kid in 2025 spouting opinions that weren't their own. it sucks that right now it's controlled by a large corpo but open source models also train on the internet corpus. freedom of knowledge and open sourcing should always exist, and if anything, even more important in the AI era.
- dylanw2468 2mo ago[flagged]