> - OSS is valuable for decentralizing power and influence

That was the intention and hope, but I think the past twenty years has shown that it largely had the opposite effect.

Let's say I write some useful library and open source it.

Joe Small Business Owner uses it in his application. It makes his app more useful and he makes an extra $100,000 from his 1,000 users.

Meanwhile Alice Giant Corporate CEO uses it in her application. It makes her app more useful by exactly the same amount, but because she has a million users, now she's a billion dollars richer.

If you assume that open source provides additive value, then giving it to everyone freely will generally have an equalizing effect. Those with the least existing wealth will find that additive value more impactful than someone who is already rich. Giving a poor person $10,000 can change their life. Give it to Jeff Bezos and it won't even change his dinner plans.

But if you consider that open source provides multiplicative value, then giving it to everyone is effectively a force multiplier for their existing power.

In practice, it's probably somewhere between the two. But when you consider how highly iterative systems are, even a slight multiplicative effect means that over time it's mostly enriching the rich.

Seven of the ten richest people in the world got there from tech [1]. If the goal of open source was to lead to less inequality, it's clearly not working, or at least not working well enough to counter other forces trending towards inequality.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World%27s_Billionaires

When presented with a choice between:

1. Take a job making $$$$$$$ at a company making the world worse.

2. Take a job making $$$ at a company not making the world worse.

Very few people have a personality such that they'll pick 2.

> Nobody is forcing you to use AI. I dislike it when people force their ideas onto others.

I'm still being forced to live in a world filled with people who do use it and whose behavior affects me.

We had the President of the United States posting AI-manipulated propaganda on social media. Millions of voters saw that, regardless of whether or not I happen to personally use ChatGPT.

It doesn't matter if I light up a cigarette myself if I have to spend all day in a crowded bar where everyone else is smoking.

> I don't think it's as black and white as you make it out to be.

I'm not saying it's black and white. All I'm saying is that your description of someone's strong feelings about AI as "clouding" their stance is incorrect. You can be clear-headed about feeling something is a large net negative for the world.

Believing that, say, the use of AI will primarily enrich billionaires that are already doing societal harm is not clouding one's view of AI. It is one's view of AI.

To say otherwise is to say that worrying about lung cancer is clouding one's view of smoking.

> they only likely hate the AI or CGI that they notice.

No, this is simply not true at all. I dislike use of AI even more when I don't notice it. My goal getting on the Internet is to connect with other actual people and their creativity. I want actual people to be more connected to each other, and AI makes that worse, especially when it's good enough that people don't even realize their are being intermediated by corporations pumping out simulated humanity.

> The implicit unfounded assumption is whether that's actually worth more than a well written orderly response.

It's not implicit or unfounded. The parent comment is explicitly saying that's what they prefer. And, as an actual human, their preference is intrinsically valid for them.

If I like my kid's crappy cooking over a Michelin-star meal made by a robot... then I get to like my kid's crappy cooking more. I have that right. There is no social consensus when it comes to what I want. You can't argue whether my preference is correct or not, it's my preference.