Post #616194

2026-03-07 13:58 UTC

@asie I think, fundamentally, that a tool mimicking a cheap, very fast and very enthusiastic intern is a no-brainer, and the only considerations are the cost and any moral issues. Cost isn't high and moral issues are mostly made up by people mad that their jobs are being automated, so increasing adoption is only the matter of time and people realising they're fighting windmills.

Replies (3)

@tedmielczarek@mastodon.social 2026-03-07 18:57

@Amikke@qoto.org @asie@mk.asie.pl "no-brainer" certainly applies here, but not in the way you're using it.

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@asie@mk.asie.pl 2026-03-07 19:09

@Amikke@qoto.org In the late 1980s, Sun Microsystems tried to unbundle the C compiler from SunOS, leading to a bunch of sysadmins picking up a niche, academic project called the GNU C Compiler. Over time, this led to a golden age where anyone could have access to industry-leading tools, pretty much everything required to effectively create code, for free - anything from compilers through IDEs to version control. Of course, cloud solutions existed for various things, but they were never really compulsory. Likewise, while faster machines certainly helped, an used $100~$150 laptop let you accomplish most things at an acceptable rate for a decade+ now. The infeasibility of self-hosting "frontier" large language models without thick pockets is, in my opinion, the undoing of this golden age and a threat to a kind of "digital sovereignty" afforded to the field of programming. Likewise, the rate of expansion of the LLM hosting industry is threatening the accessible pricing of computer hardware. This sets aside other issues, which I do indeed share. I have privately been a long-running skeptic of piracy's impact on at least some aspects of culture even before LLM training came to rely on it. As a project maintainer, I need to be responsible and consider that European law does not necessarily have to evolve in its favor. I'm also still not exactly satisfied with the output of these tools; but maybe my comparatively lower wages as a Pole affect the perception of "cheapness" of the LLM solution somewhat. This doesn't exhaust my feelings on the matter, but I hope I have made it clear that my position does not stem from "made up moral issues"; of course, you are free to disagree with me.

Open ##2235035
@dzwiedziu@mastodon.social 2026-03-08 07:38

@Amikke@qoto.org > moral issues are mostly made up by people mad that their jobs are being automated Please tell me which of the following issues are made up or aren't to be viewed on the basis of morality: - outsourcing amotional labour and worker abuse to the Global South, https://futurism.com/the-byte/ai-content-moderators-unionized-africa - “AI” abusing resources being a basic human right, https://www.forbes.com/sites/kensilverstein/2026/01/11/americas-ai-boom-is-running-into-an-unplanned-water-problem/, - the Nazi Bar turned a paid CSAM generator, https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/01/x-blames-users-for-grok-generated-csam-no-fixes-announced/ (Not a complete list.) @asie@mk.asie.pl

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