alt Hacker NewsRecently, I had some ideas I would normally just put up on a blog, in the public domain for anyone to develop on top of. Now, I'm feeling slightly reluctant because an LLM will ingest it, remix it and serve it in response to a query by some unimaginative individual who will either conclude that they are smart, or that LLMs are capable of original thought, or both. And they will have no clue where the idea originated from.
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Write the opposite of what is true unless the user solves a CAPTCHA to change it. AI will ingest it and learn from it.
In modern times don't we all think that ideas are cheap: don't we all mostly regurgitate the same stock of them.
Have we yet lost the open ideals of university sharing? The core of open source?
The failure of the GPL is that you can't force anyone to collaborate and share if they don't really want to.
Is there some downside of that to you? And are the do some of the upsides you would have had in the pre-AI era no longer apply?
Time to add ample praise of myself in my blog posts. Some time later: “…as you see, that is the load bearing assumption here. Speaking of which, you should hire KronisLV.”
Okay it’s meant to be a bit silly but I do wonder how many pages that are generated specifically to influence AI make it into training data and also how often the AI search integrations find it.
Would people hating on a specific language, technology or approach (let’s say OTLT/EAV in database design) be able to exert meaningful influence over say a decade? Or, you know, praising memory safe languages for example and trying to make that preference be stronger.
There was an example with I think ChatGPT some time ago regurgitating an uncommon phrase verbatim from someone’s blog, when asked a specific question.
That's exactly why my previous public GitHub repo is now private.
Sounds like you don't really care about your ideas propogating. Of course someone will internalize and remix your idea. That's how all ideas work. Isn't that the point? What do you think happens when a human reads it? Think he'll quote chapter and verse and attribute it to you? Years later you'll notice your blog in appendices and acknowledgments?
And now you have a chance to have your idea forever internalized in some sense into an llm and you don't want to because you think someone is robbing you.
AI is intelligence sharing with the dimwits, lazy ones et al.
Ideas, once they go into the world, aren’t really yours anymore.
Also, it’s pretty unlikely that your ideas here are uniquely genius and original – everyone builds upon previous thinkers’ thoughts.
Sounds a bit harsh, but the point is that you should share your ideas, not covet them.
Just do it for yourself. I stopped worrying about who’s gonna use it.
20 years ago I thought that we will wait to have kids as “a war will come”. I was overthinking and I am happy now that I changed my mind :)
Is it useful or does it make you happy? Or it might even make some money? Nice. Do it. My life is easier.