alt Hacker News“AI has turned Stallman's goal of software freedom on its head. Having your computer do whatever your imagination can think up -- that's real freedom. The only catch is you'll have no idea how it works. No one does.”
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You don't understand Stallman then. Now you are dependent on closed source from closed source AI vendors. True software freedom would then being able to dissassemble the bot writing your code.
"Being dependent on a small number of AI vendors, who also penetrate every aspect of your life to control, report, and spy upon you, forced to use AI at work or be laid off, or just be made redundant and let off anyway, while drowing in slop from every corner of social media, news, youtube, search results, and any other cultural production -- that's real freedom!"
A freedom that only works as long there is an AI model one is able to reach for, with stolen data from the whole known universe.
I bet that person thinks driving a car is real freedom too.
(You need to pass a test, maintain a license from the government, in many places have proof of passing a maintenance test, pay an annual fee to the government, roads can be closed at will by the government. They can install tolls if they wish etc. In the UK, the police can stop you and search your vehicle without reason and I'm sure that's true in many other countries)
I'm also not sure how that ended up the definition of real freedom. Maybe some Spinoza is in order but genuine freedom is proper understanding of one's own, and others, nature and causes. That is to say one is free to the extent that one has adequate knowledge.
To live in ignorance, that is to be pushed, pulled or compelled by what you don't understand, for example because you've outsourced your life to the magical mystery programming box, is in his terminology bondage.
Which also explains why all these AI psychosis people sound like crack addicts. Stallman is still completely correct about what software freedom is
Other ones being to keep paying the AI bros in perpetuity, and having all your prompts, data, and IP getting stolen by the same people with the goal of eventually undermining your own ability to think. We will all be as free as the people living in Pods in Matrix.
Nobody knows how Stallman, or anyone else, works either. But folks don’t need to understand how he works to understand, say, EMacs.
Folks can take EMacs as is and decipher it in isolation of Stallman, or any of the other authors.
But even then, how many people understand the internals of EMacs, or the interrelationships of the zillion lines of code in hundreds of files? Yet, millions of ignorant people leverage and apply EMacs to their daily tasks.
Look at what the REA impact is having on all sorts of code bases. The ONE THING that pushed Stallman over the edge and onto his path. The lack of source code to a print driver (or something along those lines).
Well, it’s all Open Source now.
Not only is the source “open”. It can be explained.
“Here is the source tree to EMacs. ELI5 the garbage collector.” “Working…”
It goes both ways. Now everyone has access to a savant to explain software, if that’s what they like.