Post by @cwebber@social.coop

In an interesting moment to watch, legally: https://www.404media.co/reverse-engineer-anything-is-the-new-wild-west-of-ai/

I'm not a fan of / don't respect vibecoding, but I *am* a fan of jailbreaking devices and *legalizing* decompiling (notably, the decompiling work that's interesting is not happening by vibecoders though).

It's an interesting moment because previously corporations have been in the "we can do whatever we want because we're exploiting the commons" perspective, and now things are starting to hit against their own stuff. What will happen? I don't know.

I'm not sure what is going to happen from a legal perspective, but I think we are looking at one of three outcomes:

- This all gets declared legal, which would be a huge win against the ways corporations hold copyright over people
- This all gets declared *illegal*, which could be a win against a bunch of the business cases genAI hinges upon
- But unfortunately, there is also the likely third option: big corporations become allowed to do these things, individuals are not

404 Media

‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the New Wild West of AI

Decompiled, cloned, and modified software is going viral and might slopify everything.

6 Boosts

1 Like

doragasu

@doragasu@mastodon.sdf.org 57 min. ago

@cwebber They'll cook a "DMCA like" law making reverse engineering illegal and we will descend another step to hell.

puppy

@butchrobot@shork.nerdmusic.net 2 hr. ago

@cwebber@social.coop The thing nobody is talking about is how dysfunctional and unworkable this software is. It will reach a capacity where vibe coding is prohibitively expensive, there will still be a ton of work to be done on it, and nobody will be able to read the code because it's vibe coded.

I'm afraid that my prediction is that none of this will pan out to mean anything. Nothing vibe coded is of acceptable enough quality to be run by anybody, and that won't ever change.

Furthermore, and more importantly, my fear is that, regardless, most of these projects are exorbitantly expensive. If the point is to avoid rich people's whims by making your own software, I have terrible news: the people generating these apps can afford to throw away $1000+ in tokens every month, and the "tools" they're "using" are owned by the same big tech companies they claim to hate.

The long-term strategy is clear: get everybody addicted to vibe coding, then take over the world. Once the agents are producing un-read code on everyone's hardware, and they have level one access to everyone's hardware, the world ends and surveillance takes over.

Christine Lemmer-Webber

@cwebber@social.coop 12 min. ago

@butchrobot 100% agreed!

jrm4

@jrm4@mastodon.social 2 hr. ago

@cwebber

1. As an old time, I don't really get all the "vibecoding" disclaimers. Guess I'm from the hacker era, you use what you got to get what you want.

2. None of those 3 things is going to definitively happen so clearly? Up to us to just make it happen (and my gut is that refraining from "vibecoding" ain't the way to go.

logBoy

@ln@social.linux.pizza 2 hr. ago

@cwebber Today it occurred to me that these practices might start/enlarge an ecosystem of unlocking software in modern cars.

On the plus side it would break the practice of existing but locked features. Or removing distracting features.
Having such cars on the road might be a massive safety issue though.

Paul Sutton (zleap)

@zleap@techhub.social 2 hr. ago

@cwebber

If big tech can do this and try and stop individuals, then individuals can band together and make their case.

Old Fucking Punk

@lwriemen@social.librem.one 3 hr. ago

@cwebber "third option" I'm sure

MintyFries

@mintyfries@mastodon.social 3 hr. ago

@cwebber As soon as I started reading this post, option 3 leapt into my head. That will assuredly be the way things turn out, unfortunately.

allison

@aparrish@friend.camp 3 hr. ago

@cwebber i think what we'll actually see is these folk decomps etc becoming a real source of widespread malware and other exploits, and that will act as an excuse to pass laws that make it effectively illegal to sell CPUs/microcontrollers that can run arbitrary user-supplied code

Cassandrich

@dalias@hachyderm.io 3 hr. ago

@aparrish @cwebber I don't think that is technically or commercially viable.

Javascript from a website is "arbitrary user-supplied code".

At worst they can push down the level at which arbitrary user-supplied code is easy to run, so that normies end up stuck running it in a browser or whatever kind of VM rather than on metal.

And that's before we even get into how embedded/microcontroller commercial ecosystems look.

allison

@aparrish@friend.camp 3 hr. ago

@dalias @cwebber i can't so much as turn on the flashlight of my iphone without apple's explicit permission and a yearly fee

Cassandrich

@dalias@hachyderm.io 3 hr. ago

@aparrish @cwebber I mean that's Apple's software ecosystem and it's how it's always been. Not any sign of a new trend. You certainly can do whatever you want with the flashlight if you wipe Apple's software off it and run something else. I saw someone on fedi posting demos of bringing up Linux with working UI on iPhone 11 a few days ago.

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𝕵𝖔𝖘𝖊 𝕸𝖎𝖌𝖚𝖊𝖑

@omixann@mastodon.social 3 hr. ago

@cwebber a while ago I watched Alexander Avila's video on AI discourse and how huge IP holders were instrumentalizing anti-AI sentiment to strengthen copyright, and how AI companies were delighted to be regulated into a cartel where they're the sole providers of "legal AI". This was more than a year ago, it seemed smart but I didn't really think it would play out exactly like that. Now it feels so prescient...

𝙳𝚒𝚖𝚊 𝚂𝚔𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚜𝚑

@skavish@welley.social 3 hr. ago

is there good vibecoding and bad vibecoding? where is the line?

Urzl

@gooba42@mastodon.social 3 hr. ago

@cwebber The corporate capture of all things regulatory makes #3 the most likely scenario if the guillotines don't stop being here rhetoric before then.

We're not headed for peaceful places in any near-future timeline.

Jon_Danger :mastodon:

@Jon_Danger@toot.cafe 4 hr. ago

@cwebber I feel the same way, I loathe AI, but I also loathe companies that lock down devices that you own. So I am enjoying them being fucked by their own devotion to AI.