alt Hacker NewsAs you know, I deeply respect you. Not trying to argue here, just provide my own perspective:
> Why would a writer put an article online if ChatGPT will slurp it up and regurgitate it back to users without anyone ever even finding the original article?
I write things for two main reasons: I feel like I have to. I need to create things. On some level, I would write stuff down even if nobody reads it (and I do do that already, with private things.) But secondly, to get my ideas out there and try to change the world. To improve our collective understanding of things.
A lot of people read things, it changes their life, and their life is better. They may not even remember where they read these things. They don't produce citations all of the time. That's totally fine, and normal. I don't see LLMs as being any different. If I write an article about making code better, and ChatGPT trains on it, and someone, somewhere, needs help, and ChatGPT helps them? Win, as far as I'm concerned. Even if I never know that it's happened. I already do not hear from every single person who reads my writing.
I don't mean that thinks that everyone has to share my perspective. It's just my own.
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> A lot of people read things, it changes their life, and their life is better. They may not even remember where they read these things. They don't produce citations all of the time. That's totally fine, and normal. I don't see LLMs as being any different. If I write an article about making code better, and ChatGPT trains on it, and someone, somewhere, needs help, and ChatGPT helps them? Win, as far as I'm concerned. Even if I never know that it's happened. I already do not hear from every single person who reads my writing.
Not a contradiction but an addendum: plenty of creative pursuits are not about functional value, or at least not primarily. If somebody writes a seemingly genuine blog post about their family trauma, and I as the reader find out it's made-up bullshit, that's abhorrent to me, whether or not AI is involved. And I think it would be perfectly fair for writers who do create similar but genuine content to find it abhorrent that they must compete with genAI, that genAI will slurp up their words, and that genAI's mere existence casts doubt on their own authenticity. It's not about money or social utility, it's about human connection.
> I don't mean that thinks that everyone has to share my perspective. It's just my own.
I think you are walking all around the word "consent" and trying very hard to avoid it altogether.
Your perspective, because it refuses to include any sort of consent, is invalid. No perspective that refuses consent can be valid.
Agreed, totally! I still write and put stuff online.
But it definitely feels different now. It used to feel like I was tending a public garden filled with other people who might enjoy it. It still kind of feels like that, but there are a handful of giant combine machines grinding their way around the garden harvesting stuff and making billionaires richer at the same time.
It's not enough to dissuade me from contributing to the public sphere, but the vibe is definitely different.
Honestly, it reminds me a lot about the early days of Amazon. It's hard to remember how optimistic the world felt back then, but I remember a time when writing reviews felt like a public good because you were helping other people find good products. It was like we all wanted honest product information and Amazon provided a neutral venue for us to build it. Like Wikipedia for stuff.
But as Amazon got bigger and bigger and the externalities more apparent, it felt less like we were helping each other and more like we were help Bezos buy yet another yacht or media empire. And as the reviews got more and more gamed by shady companies, they became less of a useful public good. The whole commons collapsed.
I worry that the larger web and digital knowledge environment is going that way.
I still intend to create and share my stuff with the world because that's who I want to be. But I'll always miss the early days of the web where it felt like a healthier environment to be that kind of person in.