AI has become more and more prominent over the past year or so. this is fact, not speculation. if you're not in the tech sphere, you might be thinking how that could be..
the answer is, you cannot securely use a computer without running some AI-generated code on it, because it now exists on the operating system and kernel level.
- windows... well, microsoft has boasted about and planned around it.
- linux... well, linus torvalds has said you should fork the kernel if you don't like AI-generated code. as far as i can tell, nobody has, or at least a fork hasn't taken off - if i search things like "linux kernel anti ai fork", i just get the same news articles about linus torvalds telling people to fork. so the platform i thought was meant to be a safe haven from corporate bullshittery a year or so ago, no longer is.
- don't even think about suggesting macOS.
- hell, even FreeBSD has been using claude.
the only real option is to fork and maintain a version of the linux kernel or freebsd from before they started doing this, but so many improvements are lost without putting in countless hours that you could instead spend doing something else. (this is the exact reason why open source developers may as well be saints)
i don't think this affects how i use software very much right now. but what if, down the line, that code is discovered to be not very maintainable? will the linux kernel really be willing to strip out the AI-generated code and rewrite it in a way that is actually maintainable? i suspect not. same goes for many other projects at similar scale.
this isn't healthy. not for me, or folks like me (doubly so because i'm worrying about hypotheticals like the one i just talked about). not for users, since they are being forced into running code with questionable licensing and/or stability amalgamated by programs written by fascists. not for developers, because if they aren't signing themselves up for moral reprehension, additional long-term code maintenance, possible legal dubiousness, and reduced cognitive skill, they will be taken advantage of by those that have.
this isn't healthy for anyone.
with all that in mind, i recently wrote a global AI disclosure notice for my software projects.
basically, i don't use AI to write or generate anything, because i believe this to be reprehensible - and even if that wasn't the case, i don't see the benefits for myself personally.
at the same time, though, continuing to simply use a computer should not mean that i or literally anyone on the internet is a fascist, and i think that applies to a lot of software written by people who have essentially submitted to the fascism machine.
in other words, i won't, for example, stop playing Ship of Harkinian or Archipelago, or posting on Discord or Mastodon, just because their developers use LLMs. i could in many cases, but i honestly don't want to be more miserable than i already sort of am.
also, in the future, i will add contributing guidelines to all of my projects saying that you cannot submit code created with AI assistance. i realistically can't make my own license without speaking with a lawyer, so that isn't ideal... not that a license will be adhered to anyway, so i'm not sure what the point of that is aside from just screwing over the people who do want to use my code for human-made things.
...this is only partly for my sake, it's mostly for the sake of others. it doesn't really help with my situation at all.
i graduated a few years ago with a bachelor's in computer technology. since then i've only worked a year of tech support call center, before crumbling under the stress and being let go - i've not been able to actually use my degree meaningfully. and now, seeing everything devolve into and submit to the fascism machine, i worry that my degree is effectively worthless, because if i get a tech job it will likely be to help maintain the infrastructure that powers the various AI datacenters popping up and wreaking environmental havoc, or the cameras spying on people who just want to live their lives. using the degree i worked for will now almost certainly mean discarding my morals, and i don't know if i'm okay with that.
for the past year or so, i've just been hanging on and hoping things get better. they haven't. i'm scared that maybe they never will.
if you want to read more about the impacts AI has had on people, SourceHut recently banned all original AI or AI-related projects, and their blog post has more insight on it all. they certainly worded it better than i ever could.