The problem is whether people see programming as a zero-sum or positive sum enterprise. In the real world, it acts as a positive sum enterprise: one person's contribution benefits themselves and all those who use or learn from the code. However many gatekeeping-type people view it, perhaps instinctively, as zero-sum. They imagine that OpenAI benefitting from this partnership, or any amount of learning via web-scraping their models perform, necessarily harms those who put their content online. This in a nonsensical argument yet has garnered a fair amount of support due to the somewhat reflexive anti-AI sentiment as of late, which is separated from the more nuanced concerns of existential threats due to AI.
Positive-sum rarely exists in this world.. after all, one's wealth determines their influence over others. Both sides might gain but this usually means others lose.
In this case, contributors might lose attribution. SO might lose traffic but they'll be compensated. Contributors won't so eventually there might be no reason to contribute anymore..
Isn't the existence of wealth in the first place sufficient evidence that wealth is something that gets created? We started out banging rocks together and now we have all of this weird stuff which presumably people like or something.
Now we work harder, and it's getting unbearable for those kn the bottom... Wealth also affects whether you're "useful" and you need to be "useful" to survive.. It's getting harder to be useful
It’s simply false that positive sum doesn’t exist the real world. Even the most simplistic trade argument in remedial Econ 101, or even Bio 101 reveals this.
If I'm not mistaken, the whole society is getting wealthier, it's just some people are getting wealthier faster than the others - so it's still a sum-positive.
You only consider those that "make it", there any many who don't because it's getting increasingly harder to be "useful" in the market (ChatGPT is cheaper), innovations usually make it worse. Those "new jobs" are harder and many won't qualify
Imagine that you spent a lot of time helping people and building a community. Then a company encodes this "help" into text format and put it into a book, and makes a lot of money selling the book. In doing so, this company kills the community. You wouldn't be pissed off about that?
