[pu_pe]

I believe the exact opposite. We will see open source contributions skyrocket now. There are a ton of people who want to help and share their work, but technical ability was a major filter. If the barrier to entry is now lowered, expect to see many more people sharing stuff.

[jacquesm]

Yes, more people will be sharing stuff. And none of it will have long term staying power. Or do you honestly believe that a project like GCC or Linux would have been created and maintained over as long as they have been by the use of AI tools in the hands of noobs?

Technical ability is an absolute requirement for the production of quality work. If the signal drowns in the noise then we are much worse off than where we started.

[signatoremo]

I’m sure you know the majority of GCC and Linux contributors aren’t volunteers, but employees who are paid to contribute. I’m struggling to name a popular project that it isn’t the case. Can you?

If AI is powerful enough to flood open source projects with low quality code, it will be powerful enough to be used as gatekeeper. Major players who benefit from OSS, says Google, will make sure of that. We don’t know how it will play out. It’s shortsighted to dismiss it all together.

[pu_pe]

Ok but now you have raised the bar from "open source" to "quality work" :)

Even then, I am not sure that changes the argument. If Linus Torvalds had access to LLMs back then, why would that discourage him from building Linux? And we now have the capability of building something like Linux with fewer man-hours, which again speaks in favor of more open source projects.