> From: Ronald Hudson <[email protected]> > > AI is a tool - so I see this the same as "I want to have a barn, > but I don't want anyone to help who uses a hammer" > > But the gatekeeping is pretty bad here.
The hammer analogy presumes that technology is neutral. To quote Richard Stallman [1] on this subject: > The principle of technological neutrality is valid, but it has > limits. Some kinds of technology are harmful; they may pollute air > or water, encourage antibiotic resistance, abuse their users, abuse > the workers that make them, or cause massive unemployment. These > should be taxed, regulated, discouraged, or even banned. > > The principle of technological neutrality applies only to purely > technical decisions. It is not "ethical neutrality" or > "social neutrality"; it does not apply to decisions about ethical > and social issues... The profit motive guarantees willful ignorance about ethical considerations. Those details require intellectual honesty. Ethical considerations aside, a compiler is deterministic. Given the same version the same inputs, it produces the same results. It doesn't give different results a month later, or give different results to different users. It can include debugging symbols to trace which input files and line numbers a section of code came from. >From my perspective, machine-generated source code isn't actually source code. For example, JWASM output may be Javascript, but Javascript is treated as a disposable virtual machine. The real development takes place elsewhere. Without the actual sources it's an unmaintainable blob. A better analogy might be "I want to build a barn from raw materials. I don't want to fix a pre-fabricated unit without blueprints." Pre-fab barns are indeed faster and easier. They can be very well made too. Are they actually better? That depends on your goals and values, and it also depends on the fabricator to deliver on their promises. Gate-keeping is about controlling what other people do. Policy is information. Consent requires *informed* consent. -Ben [1] Technological Neutrality by RMS <https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/technological-neutrality.html> _______________________________________________ Freedos-devel mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/freedos-devel
