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I think that this is the scariest part of the upcoming AI era. Every time you want to do something, you essentially have to ask permission from a corporation (

I think that this is the scariest part of the upcoming AI era. Every time you want to do something, you essentially have to ask permission from a corporation (and, possibly, from a government that regulates it) to do it. I was thinking about Bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto. Regardless of what you think about Bitcoin (I know that large part of HN crowd is very critical of it), my point is that people were able to create software that has big social impact without asking permission from anyone and without revealing their identity. Back in the days you could be just some guy sitting in your room, possibly in a backwaters 3rd world country, with a laptop that costs just a couple of hundred dollars and you (potentially) could be just as impactful as a well funded corporate coder. It all depended on your skills and ingenuity. Now, we are coming to an era when you: 1. Have to have resources to buy tokens or buy/rent inference hardware 2. Have to reveal your identity, your intentions and ask for a permission. Everything you do is potentially logged and analyzed Of course, theoretically you can do everything "the old school way", but if AI makes a programmer 100x - 1000x more productive, you will always be behind and never catch up.

aprilthird2021 24d ago
Every closed source software has the potential to centralize and lock you out of it. This has been true before and will be true after the AI bubble (not saying AI isn't useful but the current valuations will pop at some point, just like dotcom). Bitcoin was decentralized but so was cash. And it was still possible to send cash to people around the world it was just harder to set up and trust. And those cash sending mechanisms didn't really lock people out of them (but could theoretically, sometimes did by way of sanctions). AI doesn't make programmers 100x productive and it never will, so not really a point there. As long as the output is non deterministic, you have to check it, and no one can check their code 100x faster than writing it
- vova_hn2 24d ago
  > Every closed source software has the potential to centralize and lock you out of it. Ye, but you could (at least, theoretically) make your own open source alternative and you weren't particularly disadvantaged compared to corporate programmers doing closed source. For example, Linux initially was just one guy doing it for fun and see how far did it go. We may soon come to a situation, when something like Linux will be impossible, because devs making proprietary software will have access to newer/better models that are only sold to big companies and tightly controlled (in the sense that you can use them only for certain "safe" purposes). > Bitcoin was decentralized but so was cash. And it was still possible to send cash to people around the world it was just harder to set up and trust. And those cash sending mechanisms didn't really lock people out of them (but could theoretically, sometimes did by way of sanctions). My point is that in future we may come to a scenario when someone like Satoshi won't be able to create something like Bitcoin while keeping their privacy. Because you have to provide a phone number to use OpenAI and also because "creating a non government-authorized financial instrument violates my safety guidelines" or something. > AI doesn't make programmers 100x productive and it never will, so not really a point there. As long as the output is non deterministic, you have to check it, and no one can check their code 100x faster than writing it Maybe, maybe not. I'm afraid that eventually fully automated systems will be able to produce code that is good enough without manual checking. Doesn't matter if it is deterministic or not. If the probability of a catastrophic failure is low enough, you can safely ignore it.
- alyeska2 24d ago
  > AI doesn't make programmers 100x productive and it never will I can't wrap my head around the AI naysayers at this point. We've had the equivalent of watching the tech go from the Wright Brothers plane to supersonic stealth fighter jets in the span of like 4 years, and yet people keep claiming it will never do things that it clearly will do in like... 6 months. Or in the case of 100x programmer... it's literally already there. You should try it.
  - aprilthird2021 22d ago
    I use it every single day at my job where I have access to frontier models and unlimited tokens. It's great! But there's no 100x engineer in massive codebases that have been around for 15+ years with AI. I'm not a naysayer, I'm just realistic. It's a great productivity booster! But 100x? Come on
- Hizonner 24d ago
  > Every closed source software has the potential to centralize and lock you out of it. ... and you can write your own alternative software. But you can't provide your own 2TB GPU to help you (or to run it, if that's what it needs). So if They(TM) don't like what you're doing, They(TM) can put you at a vast disadvantage compared to everybody else.
  - vova_hn2 24d ago
    > But you can't provide your own 2TB GPU to help you (or to run it, if that's what it needs). Worst case scenario: high performance chips will be controlled like drugs or firearms (outside US). Like, requiring a license to own, being allowed to use only for specific "safe" purposes, possibly having to submit some kind of telemetry to prove that you are not doing anything "unsafe". Except, unlike drugs and firearms this control might actually work, because you can't cook chips in an underground lab (unlike drugs) and there are no gazillions of chips in circulation some of which will inevitably slip through the cracks (unlike firearms). I mean, of course there are chips in circulation, but if such control ever will be implemented, you can allow older chips and only control those that are released after passing the law. Eventually, uncontrolled chips will become hopelessly obsolete.
cft 24d ago
It's a difference between peer-to-peer Bitcoin decentralization and extreme AI datacenter centralization. Open weight models currently also require centralized datacenters for training, even though inference can be done decentralized.. We will see whether centralization or decentralization wins long term.
burnt-resistor 24d ago
Welcome to technofeudal fascism.

aprilthird2021 24d ago

Every closed source software has the potential to centralize and lock you out of it. This has been true before and will be true after the AI bubble (not saying AI isn't useful but the current valuations will pop at some point, just like dotcom). Bitcoin was decentralized but so was cash. And it was still possible to send cash to people around the world it was just harder to set up and trust. And those cash sending mechanisms didn't really lock people out of them (but could theoretically, sometimes did by way of sanctions). AI doesn't make programmers 100x productive and it never will, so not really a point there. As long as the output is non deterministic, you have to check it, and no one can check their code 100x faster than writing it

vova_hn2 24d ago
> Every closed source software has the potential to centralize and lock you out of it. Ye, but you could (at least, theoretically) make your own open source alternative and you weren't particularly disadvantaged compared to corporate programmers doing closed source. For example, Linux initially was just one guy doing it for fun and see how far did it go. We may soon come to a situation, when something like Linux will be impossible, because devs making proprietary software will have access to newer/better models that are only sold to big companies and tightly controlled (in the sense that you can use them only for certain "safe" purposes). > Bitcoin was decentralized but so was cash. And it was still possible to send cash to people around the world it was just harder to set up and trust. And those cash sending mechanisms didn't really lock people out of them (but could theoretically, sometimes did by way of sanctions). My point is that in future we may come to a scenario when someone like Satoshi won't be able to create something like Bitcoin while keeping their privacy. Because you have to provide a phone number to use OpenAI and also because "creating a non government-authorized financial instrument violates my safety guidelines" or something. > AI doesn't make programmers 100x productive and it never will, so not really a point there. As long as the output is non deterministic, you have to check it, and no one can check their code 100x faster than writing it Maybe, maybe not. I'm afraid that eventually fully automated systems will be able to produce code that is good enough without manual checking. Doesn't matter if it is deterministic or not. If the probability of a catastrophic failure is low enough, you can safely ignore it.
alyeska2 24d ago
> AI doesn't make programmers 100x productive and it never will I can't wrap my head around the AI naysayers at this point. We've had the equivalent of watching the tech go from the Wright Brothers plane to supersonic stealth fighter jets in the span of like 4 years, and yet people keep claiming it will never do things that it clearly will do in like... 6 months. Or in the case of 100x programmer... it's literally already there. You should try it.
- aprilthird2021 22d ago
  I use it every single day at my job where I have access to frontier models and unlimited tokens. It's great! But there's no 100x engineer in massive codebases that have been around for 15+ years with AI. I'm not a naysayer, I'm just realistic. It's a great productivity booster! But 100x? Come on
Hizonner 24d ago
> Every closed source software has the potential to centralize and lock you out of it. ... and you can write your own alternative software. But you can't provide your own 2TB GPU to help you (or to run it, if that's what it needs). So if They(TM) don't like what you're doing, They(TM) can put you at a vast disadvantage compared to everybody else.
- vova_hn2 24d ago
  > But you can't provide your own 2TB GPU to help you (or to run it, if that's what it needs). Worst case scenario: high performance chips will be controlled like drugs or firearms (outside US). Like, requiring a license to own, being allowed to use only for specific "safe" purposes, possibly having to submit some kind of telemetry to prove that you are not doing anything "unsafe". Except, unlike drugs and firearms this control might actually work, because you can't cook chips in an underground lab (unlike drugs) and there are no gazillions of chips in circulation some of which will inevitably slip through the cracks (unlike firearms). I mean, of course there are chips in circulation, but if such control ever will be implemented, you can allow older chips and only control those that are released after passing the law. Eventually, uncontrolled chips will become hopelessly obsolete.

cft 24d ago

It's a difference between peer-to-peer Bitcoin decentralization and extreme AI datacenter centralization. Open weight models currently also require centralized datacenters for training, even though inference can be done decentralized.. We will see whether centralization or decentralization wins long term.

burnt-resistor 24d ago

Welcome to technofeudal fascism.