alt Hacker NewsWhy do SWE build tools in the open that are openly hostile to their own trade? Like I can understand someone selfishly building tools for themselves, but by contributing to these efforts you're basically donating free software tools to companies that will only be used to shrink their own engineering teams by making llms more capable/efficient.
While I think all LLMs are shit, they probably eventually will not be shit, and it will because people like you contributed to their progress. Nothing good will come of it for you or your peers. The Billionaires who own everything will kick you out to the curb as soon as you train your replacement that doesn't sleep, eat or complain. Have some class solidarity.
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Every AI advancement liberates real humans from drudgery and allows them to create what they want more easily.
The invention of the digital calculator turned human calculators into accountants, and that's great! We're contributing to the same process now
Staying true to your username at least. While I hear you in principle, I don’t think shaming people into not building things is going to work out. Even if you could convince some people, you’ll never reach them all. Someone will build it. IMO energy is better spent figuring out how to best structure our society to handle the seemingly inevitable end state where superhuman AI is commonplace.
How do you feel about software engineers who build open source libraries?
Open source has been responsible for enormous productivity boosts in our industry, because we don't all have to build duplicates of exactly the same thing time and time again.
But think of all of the jobs that were lost by people who would otherwise been employed building the 500th version of a CSS design system, or a template engine, or code to handle website logins!
What makes AI tools different? (And I actually do agree that they feel different, but I'm interested in hearing arguments stronger than "it feels different".)