Linux

Cory Doctorow's "Reverse Centaurs Guide to Life After AI" has a short section that pertains to this. He talks about how someone like Linus essentially doesn't have a boss and has untold resources for whatever "AI" "tools" he finds useful.

He isn't ever forced to use the wrong tool for the job or use a tool that simply doesn't do what his boss thinks it does. He doesn't have to worry about getting fired or his coworkers getting fired because his boss was sold a story about reducing labor costs with this cool new "tool". He simply uses what's useful to him with the probably millions of dollars of compute made available to him by the tech giants.

95% of people don't have that luxury. They have a boss itching to get rid of them or 10x their workload with the help of the "tool" that Linus is so happily and defiantly praising on behalf of the monopolists.

AI is just a tool, the user of a tool should be competent enough to use it properly

The other practical side of this is enforceability.

Lets say Linux banned all use of VSCode in contributions, this second. And any Microsoft tools. No exceptions. And it makes sense, because there is an evil blatantly anti-linux entity behind it... What are people gonna do?

Keep using it anyway, and just not disclose it.

This is why linux doesn't tell people what tools they can and can't use. Practically, they can't police what tools people use, just what they contribute. Just like (to a reasonable degree) they don't try to police people who contributes to the kernel, but instead judge them by their contributions. Other contributors don't have to like those tools or contributors, but that is how a project like this must operate.

the thing is - no other tool (currently ^yall_cant_read^) in our industry, and others, out there involves as much active destruction in both the working class and environment in its use.

that’s it. that’s the bit.

for those not understanding: the word “in” above implies in current use not that i am comparing AI’s effects with the invention of knitting machines or electricity.

here is the email this screenshot is an excerpt of; the specific "X" (the thing which the message Linus is replying to here suggested perhaps AI should not be used for) was the writing of commit messages.

Maybe the rule should be that if you use AI, just make sure Linus can’t tell you did.

When the topic is AI, the quality of some of these Lemmy threads drops down to the level of YouTube comments.

It’s a pretty reductive take, that treats tools as politically and behaviorally inert. The work on understanding how cultural artifacts use us just as much as (or maybe more than) we use them goes back several centuries.

But Linus is just an engineer, after all. There’s no reason to treat him as some high-minded philosopher (and he’d probably be the first to tell you that). And for as long as the history of thought into the politics of artifacts may be, the history of engineers focusing only on solving the problem in front of them and not thinking about “where the rockets come down” is about as long.