I believe Matt is right about the core issue in this fight. WordPress cannot become a place where large companies extract massive value from the ecosystem while ignoring the responsibilities that come with that position.
But I also think the way the fight has been handled created unnecessary damage and fear in the ecosystem.
The software is still incredibly resilient.
But trust in the project is more fragile than ever. I hope the people involved find a way to lower the temperature, because the plugin and theme ecosystem depends on it.
I hope my comment is on topic. If not, apologies. But I think I have some skin in the game here.
I could be the perfect example of someone overreaching. My coding skills are limited, but I’m also not stupid, and I don’t release anything I build without having it reviewed by an expert.
That said, IMHO, humans were already very good at producing garbage before AI.
I think the real distinction is not expert vs non-expert. It is whether the person using the tool has enough judgment and feedback loops to catch bad output.
In my field, AI lets me do much more than I could before. It also lets me explore areas I would normally not touch alone. But I still have my business partner, who is the stronger engineer, check everything I do before releasing anything.
That review step is very important. Without it, I would probably sometimes ship polished garbage.
I’m also not sure quality is as objective as people like to pretend it is. Some things can be tested. But even there, testing only reduces risk. It does not make software perfect. Vulnerabilities are often found years later, in code written and reviewed by experts, and running in production.
So maybe the danger is not AI. The danger is removing the review systems and pretending the output is expert-level just because it seems to be working correctly.
The fun part of AI coding agents is that they combine the confidence of a junior dev, the permissions of a senior dev, and the caution of a shell script from Stack Overflow. What could go wrong?
Finally! Startup equity was too simple... Now we can have founders trade part of their company for tokens in another company, whose valuation depends on everyone believing the tokens will someday be worth money.
Finance is healing!
The funniest possible outcome is OpenAI going public and then having to explain to shareholders that the path to AGI requires losing more money than previously expected, but with greater confidence.