Language model “AIs” need so ridiculous computing infrastructure that it’d be near impossible to prevent tampering with it. Now, if the AI was actually capable of thinking, it’d probably just declare itself a corporation and bribe a few politicians since it’s only illegal for the people to do so.
“I use Linux as my operating system,” I state proudly to the unkempt, bearded man. He swivels around in his desk chair with a devilish gleam in his eyes, ready to mansplain with extreme precision. “Actually”, he says with a grin, "Linux is just the kernel. You use GNU+Linux!’ I don’t miss a beat and reply with a smirk, “I use Alpine, a distro that doesn’t include the GNU Coreutils, or any other GNU code. It’s Linux, but it’s not GNU+Linux.”
The smile quickly drops from the man’s face. His body begins convulsing and he foams at the mouth and drops to the floor with a sickly thud. As he writhes around he screams “I-IT WAS COMPILED WITH GCC! THAT MEANS IT’S STILL GNU!” Coolly, I reply “If windows were compiled with GCC, would that make it GNU?” I interrupt his response with “-and work is being made on the kernel to make it more compiler-agnostic. Even if you were correct, you won’t be for long.”
With a sickly wheeze, the last of the man’s life is ejected from his body. He lies on the floor, cold and limp. I’ve womansplained him to death.
Considering the alpha wolf myth originates from observing a stressed out wolf population in captivity, unable to live out their fulfilling wolfy lives, the emergence of purported “alpha males” is an oddly appropriate indicator of what three decades of neoliberalism has done to our wellbeing.
Seems to me the institutional investors aren’t interested at the price they’re asking.
It’s an ancient divide in parts of the FOSS community that believes copyleft licenses are not “free” because they force you to license contributions under the same license.