[Video] Richard Stallman's New Talk in Germany Covers What Free Software Means, Why LLMs are "Bullshit", and Lots More (Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin)
Update: We now have a full transcript too.
WebM: Closing Keynote Day 3 - Dr. Richard Stallman - Web3 Summit 2024 Berlin
There's a new talk by Richard M. Stallman (Invidious URLs [1, 2]). I've watched the entire thing, including questions and answers (some questions seem rather misinformed and out of place, e.g. "smart contacts" or "Web3"), but the text below focuses on the half-an-hour "core" talk rather than audience-driven interaction, which lasted more than half an hour and was partly irrelevant.
From Web3 Summit 2024's speakers page:
Richard M. Stallman (RMS) has a new public talk online. He did not announce this in his site and we know why the FSF never mentions his talks either.
The curious thing is, he gave this talk in a clandestine fashion, sort of. Without telling almost anyone, not even some of his closest friends, RMS traveled to Europe last month. As a reminder, his last two talks (in France and Spain) got cancelled at short notice and it seemed clear someone had contacted the organisers to make it so. So this talk in Germany is likely his first since April, namely the Universidade do Minho (Portugal) talk. He spoke about interesting topics (it's in English) - we have the whole video!
Now we use present tense, albeit this was days ago (unlike half a year ago). In Berlin he speaks about LLMs lacking an understanding and hence "intelligence". He downplays the potency of these, saying that they spew out false statements. He says, don't call them "AI" and insists he sometimes calls them "bullshit generators". He says there are also humans who generate bullshit, giving Donald Trump as an example and earning claps from the audience.
He warns people not to use LLMs in Web sites, even if the English seems good (but the content itself is nonsense and usually outright false). He cautions against Clown Computing without calling it that (one must not entrust work to someone else's server; he explains that his own site uses a server separate from his own baby, the FSF) and he uses the term "per" to avoid the pronoun 'politics'.
He has written notes to assist him, at least a list of topics he wishes to discuss with the audience. Sometimes he pauses and looks at these notes. He speaks clearly, coherently, articulating the ideas well but sometimes making some errors, which he may or may not correct shortly afterwards (this may be due to a lack of concentration or insufficient prior practice/preparation for the event).
After about 15 minutes he talks about openwashing by Facebook's LLM nonsense. He says he could not even access the licence because the Web address required that he'd run proprietary software, so somebody sent it to him and would hopefully not be sued for copyright infringement for just sending him this restrictive licence.
He speaks against making Web pages dependent on JavaScript and delves into Web issues (this is a conference about the Web after all!). He says, "this way we'll have much less malware in the world's Web sites".
He asks the people in the audience (or those watching the video) to "make Web pages accessible to everyone" ("including people who don't run JavaScript code") and to avoid "non-standard constructs".
In fact, he says even the Web site of this event in Berlin was barely accessible to him, but this seemed to be fixed some time later. Maybe his feedback was taken into account.
Regarding the clownstrike disaster, he says, this shows what happens when many sites run the same software. It means that everything goes down on the same day.
He then comments thoughtfully on social control media. He says those sites are making people angry to keep people on the site. To quote, "this pattern is very harmful for society", especially if run based on "recommendation engines", i.e. algorithms that "also choose what to recommend [or] what people watch".
He says this is "dangerous for adults too", not just to children (he says some states have laws guarding the latter, not the former).
Towards the end he says "GitHub is not a good site to use" as it relies a lot on proprietary software. He notes that "GitHub gets an F [from GNU/FSF] and you can see exactly why."
He asks people to use another site as a code repository/front-end.
Then he talks about money and explains why he "never used cryptocurrency" (he mentions BitCoin and anonymity, which it lacks).
One good point made by him is that "unless you're a miner, how did you get it?"
So he explains how Taler works and what it is not. He emphasises that "it's not an investment vehicle" as it's tied to "real" currencies, such as Euros in Germany. He says "not a fan of risk" and "I don't gamble" before he talks about inequality, big tax evaders, and people buying elections. He says "I am proud that GNU Taler will not have that flaw".
And "please join the Free Software Foundation," he says, noting that this can be done without any JavaScript code.
Dealing with one portion of the Q&A, which covers personal matters, he is worried that his medical condition (cancer and old age, not to mention high risk due to his weight) puts him at great risk from COVID-19, hence he eats with other people in outdoor places, not restaurants indoors.
His final statement deals with Clown Computing or doing computing on someone else's computer. █