A common argument against gen-AI bans in many circles, but especially in open source software is that it’s unenforceable.
Let’s look at laws! Laws don’t necessarily stop anything. In theory, you can still do the things they ought to ban or stop. You just risk jail time.
It is the usual argument of (right-) libertarians, who make up 99% of AI executives, against all forms of regulations, and their alternative is that people should just boycott the offending corporations, and make competing businesses that will give those big monopolies a big fat reality check. Unfortunately it often ends up in the coconut island situation instead, but that doesn’t mean every situation is always like that. We even have David vs. Goliath situations working out relatively well within the open source community.
The same people are trying to give us the same orders as they are giving it to lawmakers and people concerned about deregulation. “Use the AI better than the prompt kiddies.” “Use AI to speed up your progress.” “Use a self-hosted model.” “Read the output, maybe rewrite it completely to make it yours.” “Edit the generated image to make it non-slop.”
Yet if anything, I’ve seen just as many people eventually getting AI psychosis from moderated AI usage as from vibe coding and other stuff. Even seen “hand written, AI-assisted” contributions going off of the wrong specifications completely, essentially being no better than “actual” vibe coding. AI-assisted art usually barely above quality-wise the completely AI stuff.
We shouldn’t let these techbros get to our minds and open our commons to be destroyed (I swear that’s their end goal). Just because sometimes people can sneak some AI slop into stuff, we shouldn’t be okay with AI slop, nor that we need to find a usecase for AI by yesterday.
There’s a term “security theatre” for a similar kind of situation. Like a simple latch lock on your garden gate won’t miraculously keep out thieves, however if you have your gate latched and your neighbour doesn’t, they’re going to target your neighbour. In my mind it’s the same kind of thing - those who really want to use (maybe even hide the use of) AI, they’re going to do it anyways. But those that are on the fence, or for whom AI is just the easy “no risk high reward” option, then those people would be swayed to reduce or even eliminate AI use.
TBF we’re one successful lawsuit away from corpo dropping AI, all we need is someone in court of law to invalidate their IP or copyright, and they’re gonna scramble to protect their bottom line. Can you imagine if Adobe had developers use AI to work on Photoshop, and then that lawsuit would set the precedent for people to be able to claim Photoshop for free? The pearls would be hella clutched
That’s never going to happen. The lawsuits are about who owns the models, they aren’t there to stop or even hinder AI. It’s a circus to kill open source and force us into subscription based products.
The record companies are looking to get paid, not fuck over adobe lol. All lawsuits related to this currently are pro corporation. Most of them are even win-win situations for the AI companies themselves.
I think someone needs to try to sue someone, who lies about AI usage, and then we will have laws updated and such.
