Of total users 5% is a substantial number of consumers and some would argue a non-trivial amount of market share to ignore when making a product.
This also goes without saying that the more adoption we see, the better these alternatives will get as we see consumers and businesses view Linux as worth the investment.
Even worse, the AI will supply a mediocre version of the source specific to someone else's case, and not getting anything in return, ultimately choking the open source effort. The article touches on this briefly.
All I post anymore is anti-AI sentiment because it just feels like we're in a cycle of blind trust. A lot of FOSS seems cautious about LLMs for a plethora of reasons (quality and ethics among those) but we're a long way from making the tools that are supposedly going to replace us a locally runnable tool. So, until then, we're conceding pur agency to Anthropic and whoever else.
Meanwhile, war is breaking out and disrupting already stressed supply chains and manufacturing (for instance, Taiwan relies heavily on natural gas). Many manufacturers are starting to ditch production of consumer hardware, the supposed hardware folks ITT want to run their local models on. The vast majority of datacenters aren't being built yet, and those that are being built are missing their targets, still have aging GPUs in boxes without the infrastructure to power and turn them on, all while floating hundreds of billions in debt.
Surely I can't be the only one who sees the issues here? Each topic is hours of "what ifs" and a massive gamble to see if any of it will come together in a way that will be good for anyone who visits HN.
I see a lot less thinking as a result of using LLMs as they are today and I don't see the providers building tools to promote a better way to use them. They are still way too sycophantic.
Yeah, it is wild seeing with my eyes how bad these tools are in a lot of cases. We do have some vibe coders on our team but they basically are banned from my current project because they completely ruin the design and nuke throughput. HN would have me believe I'm a Luddite who shouldn't be writing code, however. I truly do not understand how to reconcile this experience and many times it is too complicated a topic to explain to someone who isn't an engineer. AI is the uiltmate Dunning-Kruger machine. You cannot fix what you do not know because you do not know that you did not know.
As you say, I think things are just going to fall apart and we're just going to have to learn the hard way.
No, these tools are really great in a lot of cases. But they still don't have general intelligence or true understanding of anything - so if people using them wrong and rely on their output because it looks good and not because they verified it, then this is on the people using them.
I mean, that is fine, but then it seems like people at large are not using them "right". I think you'll find that since these tools are convenient and produce a lot of code in terms of lines, that verifying goes out the window. Due diligence was hard before these tools existed.
Oh I do find it certainly tempting to get lazy with these tools, but I did learn that there are sideprojects, where vibecoding is fine - and important codebase, that can be improved with LLM's - but not if you just let agents loose on them.
I feel like a crazy person, especially when I read HN. Half or more of the comments on this thread are saying how the game is over for even writing code. Then at my job, I see people break things at a rate I can't personally keep up with. Worse, I hear more and more colleagues talk about mandated AI tooling usage and massive regression rates. My company isn't there yet, but I feel it is around the corner.
> People say OpenAI is burning money and is on the verge of collapse. The same people will say OpenAI building an ads business on ChatGPT is "enshittifcation". These people are quite insufferable, no offense to the many who are exactly as I described.
I guess ignore the evidence of what I can see? If it provided the value everyone says it does, then charging the amount of what you would generate for ad revenue doesn't seem like a huge ask. But that's not the objective, is it? All the players want to become the defacto AI provider, and they know bait and switch tactics is all they have.
This sentiment comes off as an abusive relationship with the tech industry. Rewarding new ways to define a race to the bottom. We never demand or expect better, just gladly roll over and throw money at your new keeper. It's sad.
If it provided the value everyone says it does, then charging the amount of what you would generate for ad revenue doesn't seem like a huge ask.
Vast majority of Youtube viewers do not pay for Premium. No one pays for Google search premium. No one pays for Instagram or Facebook or Whatsapp.
There are certain class of services that work best with ads driven business model. ChatGPT is one of them.
If Google and all other search engines locked search behind a subscription, it'd do a great disservice to the world since it means the poor can't use it.
Except that this product isn't comparable whatsoever to Youtube. Contrary to your point, there are whole businesses popping up because people are paying for search engines due to users feeling that Google's results are insufficient for serious search. I'm not sure this is a proper comparison.
The blog isn't even necessarily anti-AI yet the majority of responses here are defending it like the author kicked their dog.
The sentiment that developers shouldn't be writing code anymore means I cannot take you seriously. I see these tools fail on a daily basis and it is sad that everyone is willing to concede their agency.
They don't care about good code, but they do pay people a lot of money to care about good code. If the people you hired didn't care, our software quality would be worse than it is. And since people are caring less in the face of AI, it is getting worse.
This also goes without saying that the more adoption we see, the better these alternatives will get as we see consumers and businesses view Linux as worth the investment.
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