I've come across that quote several times, and reach the same conclusion as you.

While I share Dijkstra's sentiment that "thinking machines" is largely a marketing term we've been chasing for decades, and this new cycle is no different, it's still worth discussing and... thinking about. The implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic human thinking are far beyond the implications of a machine that can approximate or mimic swimming. It's frankly disappointing that such a prominent computer scientist and philosopher would be so dismissive and uninterested in this fundamental CS topic.

Also, it's worth contextualizing that quote. It's from a panel discussion in 1983, which was between the two major AI "winters", and during the Expert Systems hype cycle. Dijkstra was clearly frustrated by the false advertising, to which I can certainly relate today, and yet he couldn't have predicted that a few decades later we would have computers that mimic human thinking much more closely and are thus far more capable than Expert Systems ever were. There are still numerous problems to resolve, w.r.t. reliability, brittleness, explainability, etc., but the capability itself has vastly improved. So while we can still criticize modern "AI" companies for false advertising and anthropomorphizing their products just like in the 1980s hype cycle, the technology has clearly improved, which arguably wouldn't have happened if we didn't consider the question of whether machines can "think".

"AGI" is a marketing term, and benchmarks like this only serve to promote relative performance improvements of "AI" tools. It doesn't mean that performance in common tasks actually improves, let alone that achieving 100% in this benchmark means that we've reached "AGI".

So there is a business application, but no practical or philosophical one.

I rarely come across people who flat out say "it's not useful". They exist, but IME they're the minority.

Rather, I hear a lot of nuanced opinions of how the tech is useful in some scenarios, but that the net benefit is not clear. I.e. the tech has many drawbacks that make it require a lot of effort to extract actual value from. This is an opinion I personally share.

In most cases, those "big productivity gains" are vastly blown out of proportion. In the context of software development specifically, sure, you can now generate thousands of lines of code in an instant, but writing code was never the bottleneck. It was always the effort to carefully design and implement correct solutions to real-world problems. These new tools can approximate this to an extent, when given relevant context and expert guidance, but the output is always unreliable, and very difficult to verify.

So anyone who claims "big productivity gains" is likely not bothering to verify the output, which in most cases will eventually come back to haunt them and/or anyone who depends on their work. And this should concern everyone.

You might want to think about my argument a bit more.

> Is it less-ethical to have provided software as open source, and then later become a proprietary product? Why?

Because usually these companies use OSS as a marketing gimmick, not because they believe in it, or want to contribute to a public good. So, yes, this dishonesty is user hostile, and some companies with proprietary products do have more respect for their users. The freedoms provided by free software are a value add on top of essential values that any developer/company should have for the users of their software. OSS projects are not inherently better simply because the code is free to use, share, and modify.

To be fair, I don't think a developer/company should be expected to maintain an OSS project indefinitely. Priorities change, life happens. But being a good OSS steward means making this transition gradually, trying to find a new maintainer, etc., to avoid impacting your existing user base. Archiving the project and demanding payment is the epitome of hostile behavior.

How can people still not understand that OSS can be abused?

It doesn't matter that the previous code is still available. Nobody can technically delete it from the internet, so that's hardly something they did "right".

The original maintainers are gone, and users will have to rely on someone else to pick up the work, or maintain it themselves. All of this creates friction, and fragments the community.

And are you not familiar with the concept of OSS rugpulls? It's when a company uses OSS as a marketing tool, and when they deem it's not profitable enough, they start cutting corners, prioritizing their commercial product, or, as in this case, shut down the OSS project altogether. None of this is being a "textbook good participant".

> Meanwhile, 99% of companies never open source anything: why aren't you complaining about how "unethical" they are?

Frankly, there are many companies with proprietary products that behave more ethically and have more respect for their users than this. The fact that a project is released as OSS doesn't make it inherently better. Seeing OSS as a "free gift" is a terrible way of looking at it.