Do we need right to repair anymore with AI? Could you get Claude to code an entire tractor software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in the tractor? In other words just use the tractor for it's hardware?
(This is sarcasm, pretty please don’t vibe code car firmware, let alone anything more dangerous than that)
Vibe code administrative systems for your local golf club to your hearts desire for all I care, god forbid somebody will have to stand around a bit longer before going for their 9 holes. But safety critical equipment is not the place to fuck around with the code prediction machines that have existed for 4 years, have been writing more-or-less acceptable code for 2, and will still regularly refer to themselves as MechaHitler or just make up shit. "Yes you're absolutely correct, I was wrong" doesn't help you one bit if you have just been chewed up by heavy machinery, and the fact that people like you exist who go 'oh just a few more more unit tests surely will fix it' is a terrifying thought.
If you need assurances, have a different LLM write the test suite.
Farmers should be able to swap parts, tweak loads of things in software, etc without software locks. I should be able to do that on my car too. But the way to achieve that is not through spending a few hundreds of thousands of dollars on Opus [latest] and praying that doesn't kill me, that's the part I have an issue with in OPs comment.
Let's just ignore the part where this wouldn't even address the problem at hand!
"Farmers" aren't a monolithic lump of homogenous yokels with straw sticking out their teeth.
The Ukranian farming community birthed the cracked and reverse engineered John Deere software now being uploaded into US tractors by US farmers to bypass kill switches, for custom addons, data retention, etc.
#NotAllFarmers are SWEs, great welders, advanced diesel mechanics, pilots, ... but all these skillsets are within or closely adjacent to farming communities.
Really?
I've been a software developer since 1980 or so, never ever touched web development .. horses for courses I guess.
Interfacing with machines and instruments, no worries.
Circling back, the farmers I know want to be able to maintain everything they can within their local circle (state and federal) without being forced to reach out overseas to foreign companies such as John Deere.
Eg: Our local farmers co-op run their own rail networks and bulk handling facilities.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CBH_Group
See also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47131063
> Software for farm equipment is very specific field.
Meh - there's a lot of overlap with avionics, GIS data aquisition, mining equipment (autonomous trucks, trains, processing circuit control), general industrial applications, etc.
I'm a farmer, but I've messed about with geophysical data aquisition across entire countries, industrial control, abstract algebra systems (Cayley / Magma), sheep shearing robotics, and other fun stuff.
But you don’t have to wait for the farmers, you could “get Claude to code an entire car software and flash it onto your own hardware and put it in your car.” Post back here with your results!
Given that, the farmer or vibe coder is still going to have to take responsibility for making sure the software is verifiable and correct. Thats a heavy responsibility with a huge peice of machinery like this, its naive to equate that with making sure your todo list app or even c compiler works.
The economic calculus still means its better for an corporation to take on that responsibility, and be compensated for it. Now we just need that corporation to not be rent seeking dicks, and we could have a good thing going
Also, you'll actually need to hook up Claude to all the debug interfaces and pins present on the chip you're trying to break.
Also also, if this worked at all the feds would put a gun to Anthropic's head to make Claude refuse to do anything that might break DMCA 1201.
Law is code.