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Comment by sdesol | Hacker News Reader

> That's a very small price to pay for what we all stand to gain.

Sure, if AI was made free for everybody (or only be charged for cost to run).

With Stack Overflow, GitHub and others, there is a mutual understanding that contributing can benefit the contributor. What is the incentive to continue contributing if the social agreement is, you get to help define a statistical weight for the next token and nobody will know?

I think the future business model may require AI companies to pay people to contribute, or it might not be a technology roadblock, but rather a data roadblock that prevents further advancement.

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>> With Stack Overflow, GitHub and others, there is a mutual understanding that contributing can benefit the contributor.

I think lots of people contribute everywhere without getting any benefit at all.

I don't doubt that some who do contribute hoping for, or expecting, some ancillary benefit.

I'd suggest that pretty much the only tangible benefit I can see is those searching for a job. Contributing in public spaces is a good technique for self-promotion as being skilled in an area.

Then again I'd suggest that the majority of people participating on those sites are already employed, so they're not doing it for that benefit. I'd even argue that their day job accomplishments are likely to be more impressive than their github account when it comes to their next interview.

So perhaps I can reassure you. I'm pretty sure people will continue to absorb information, and skills, and will continue to share that with others. This has been the way for thousands of years. It has survived the inventions of writing, printing, radio, television and the internet. It will survive LLMs.

> This has been the way for thousands of years. It has survived the inventions of writing, printing, radio, television and the internet. It will survive LLM

Guilds used to jealously guard their secrets. Metallurgy techniques were lost when their creators died, or were silenced.

And most crucially - the audience has always been primarily humans. There has never been an audience composition, where authors have to worry about plagiarism as the default.

The idea of free exchange of ideas is something that we enjoyed only recently.

This isn’t naysaying or doom and gloom - this is simply reality. Placing our hopes on the wrong things leads to disappointment, anger and resentment when reality decides our hopes are an insufficient argument to change its ways.

> Then again I'd suggest that the majority of people participating on those sites are already employed, so they're not doing it for that benefit.

But the company benefits from less confusion and a better user experience. Companies are literally paying employees to provide content as it benefits the company.

I do believe there are people who freely choose to contribute with no strings attached, and I guess we'll learn in the coming years if people will contribute their time and effort for benevolent reasons.

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