Everyone walking away from this because it touches AI is losing the plot. This is probably the closest thing to digital revolution we can get. Hear me out.
There are a lot of opinions and lots of anger about how things are going in the world today and particularly the USA. More people are getting out to meat space and doing something but those protests, especially in geographically spread out areas like the USA , will never physically embody all of the frustrated people like it does in more concentrated areas, like the EU.
The next layer is the current world order, which, like it or not, has global corporatism acting as second order governance. Their ability to influence not just politics but the employment of millions leaves them in a powerful, dark, and self perpetuating unregulated position, moving from puppets to the puppet masters. This appears to be changing, hopefully. Time will tell.
AI is an extremely powerful tool. Like any globally influential idea, it requires critical thinking and a nuanced understanding to properly leverage. The cold take, at least in left of center circles (generally), is to throw out the baby with the bath water, and shut down anyone that would use it or advocate using it in any way.
At the risk of sounding too Boromir-ish to those people, nay, it is a gift.
The current world order is built on digital life. Social media. Mass marketing via ads. Screens are cheap, eyeballs plentiful, minds accessible and moods malleable. The tech world and tech bros have taken first mover advantage and turned it into a stranglehold on modern life.
Oh you’re still reading? Good, then here’s the payoff. This initiative is one of the strongest steps to take it all back or remove its power.
What if we could open source every major digital platform out there? Every app, every social media, every game, every utility free and downloadable. Open source has always been here but the ability to develop it has been hamstrung by time, effort, manpower or a combination of all three. You’re reading this on the fediverse so odds are you already share that ideology somewhat.
Open sourcing the worlds digital platforms means reducing individual and business reliance on the current monoliths of tech. There’s is nothing out there that cannot be developed and copied for use for free now. Everything can be reverse engineered and offered for a fraction of the overhead. The cornerstone of tech, programming - control over the digital bricks used to shape the world - has had the cost of creation nigh abolished. Hardware and infrastructure are the limiters, but that isn’t new. What’s new is we now have a tool, AI, that can help us build the new hardware and infrastructure for our own purposes, individuals or businesses, to free ourselves from their control.
The very tool that they use to make their system more efficient is the same tool we must use to REPLACE THEM just as they replace us. AI is power to the people as much as it is power to the corps.
However it’s the ENERGY and EFFORT to adopt, support, and use these open-source, free-world initiatives that were must cultivate. If the people abolish all use of AI and corporations keep using it, will it’s like racing a horse against a car. Blind rejection is unwitting surrender.
That’s why this project and anything else like it is vital.
There are plenty of valid reasons on both sides of the AI argument, but I feel like in the long run, if the resources used to provide AI are kept in check (harmonious with the environment) and a humanistic approach is made by businesses to adopt it, no one would have a problem with it. However, capitalism dictates otherwise so we must fight with the same weapons our opposition has, the same weapons that threaten our ability to provide for our families in this day and age, or risk failure. Ironically the same argument the frontier labs have against each other.
I didn’t mean to ramble so much. I guess I feel pretty strongly about this. I think i probably lost my train of thought a time or two but hopefully my point came across. Thanks for reading and I hope I swayed a few minds.
I’m not sure exactly what you’re asking or what angle your coming from but it feels like the answer is ingenuity. And of course anything that involves the physical world not the digital one.
Ai is imo a force multiplier or augmentation currently. That is if you are skilled in a field and can catch/correct the incongruities of llm output over the course of a project it’s an extremely powerful tool. When you can come up with new ideas and leverage that agentic harness its powerful. Ai does a mediocre, but getting better faster, job at being a stand-in “consultant” but that mediocre stand in is comparable to a hobbyist in the field. The spark of creation though, the ability to lucidly imagine what could be, is still ours though. For now.
I don’t have a lot to say on that I suppose. I’ll have to chew on that question. Maybe others have thoughts.