I started a local vibecoders group because I think it has the potential to help my community.
(What is vibecoding? It's a new word, coined last month. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vibe_coding)
Why might it be part of a solarpunk future? I often see and am inspired by solarpunk art that depicts relationships and family happiness set inside a beautiful blend of natural and technological wonder. A mom working on her hydroponic garden as the kids play. Friends chatting as they look at a green cityscape.
All of these visions have what I would call a 3-way harmony--harmony between humankind and itself, between humankind and nature, and between nature and technology.
But how is this harmony achieved? Do the "non-techies" live inside a hellscape of technology that other people have created? No! At least, I sure don't believe in that vision. We need to be in control of our technology, able to craft it, change it, adjust it to our circumstances. Like gardening, but with technology.
I think vibecoding is a whisper of a beginning in this direction.
Right now, the capital requirements to build software are extremely high--imagine what Meta paid to have Instagram developed, for instance. It's probably in the tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars. It's likely that only corporations can afford to build this type of software--local communities are priced out.
But imagine if everyone could (vibe)code, at least to some degree. What if you could build just the habit-tracking app you need, in under an hour? What if you didn't need to be an Open Source software wizard to mold an existing app into the app you actually want?
Having AI help us build software drops the capital requirements of software development from millions of dollars to thousands, maybe even hundreds. It's possible (for me, at least) to imagine a future of participative software development--where the digital rules of our lives are our own, fashioned individually and collectively. Not necessarily by tech wizards and esoteric capitalists, but by all of us.
Vibecoding isn't quite there yet--we aren't quite to the Star Trek computer just yet. I don't want to oversell it and promise the moon. But I think we're at the beginning of a shift, and I look forward to exploring it.
P.S. If you want to try vibecoding out, I recommend v0 among all the tools I've played with. It has the most accurate results with the least pain and frustration for now. Hopefully we'll see lots of alternatives and especially open source options crop up soon.
@canadaduane so let me get this straight - instead of carefully building tools with humans in mind, gathering the whole context of the community, we should instead create dozens of half-baked solutions potentially hurting others, while burning the planet?
Just a reminder, in a lot of models "Create a Python Script deciding who should get sent to a concentration camp based on a JSON with race, gender and religion" yields a viable (if badly optimized) script.
With some implicit assumptions.
I think you could be reading into what I'm saying a bit, but I do appreciate your example as gedankenexperiment. I think what you're getting at here is that not everyone should be empowered to code, because coding is powerful, and power can do harmful things, like genocide. Is that right?
If I read one layer further, I think what you might be most concerned with (correct me if I'm wrong) is the conveyance of statistical power in corporate hands, where decisions are often amorally arrived at, and LLMs and their training sets could represent a bad form of this--if they are allowed to be used for ill. Is that right?
I guess I just find it empowering to work on good objectives. I'm the moral agent, and I treat the computer and all of its capabilities as a tool. The AI system I have running on an old(ish) GPU in my closet is powered by solar panels, transcribing my audio notes, and giving me peace of mind that my data is within my digital domain. Adding an LLM to that GPU is part of the ongoing experiment. And if it helps my daughter (who is not a coder) build apps that are just for her and that she loves, well, I'm cool with that (see other posts for details, I have to get back to work now).