AI and the Destruction of the Creative Commons

AI language models are consuming online content without respecting copyright or open-source licenses, breaking the social contract that enabled the internet's development through shared, collaborative code. This creates perverse incentives where creators are discouraged from sharing their work openly, threatening the foundation of free and open-source software that built the modern internet and cloud infrastructure. The author argues that unlike well-documented concerns about AI's environmental and security impacts, the destruction of collaborative openness deserves greater attention.