Like many I was a taker, almost never asking or answering questions, but simply finding answers that helped me.
Even so, at some point I made sure to answer a few questions, to get enough reputation to upvote and occasionally comment. I wanted at least to be able to reward / thank those who had posted answers that I found helpful. Even for 5 or 10 year-old answers, if an answer helped me I'd upvote it.
Now we're all "taking" via AI. We don't know who posted a helpful answer 10 years ago that the AI learned from in order to help us. That saddens me.
But in a way that's just the way of the world. We know to credit Pythagorus and Fourier and a few others whose names are attached to their methods. But for the most part we're all constantly standing on the shoulders of anonymous giants whose names are long lost.
Even so, at some point I made sure to answer a few questions, to get enough reputation to upvote and occasionally comment. I wanted at least to be able to reward / thank those who had posted answers that I found helpful. Even for 5 or 10 year-old answers, if an answer helped me I'd upvote it.
Now we're all "taking" via AI. We don't know who posted a helpful answer 10 years ago that the AI learned from in order to help us. That saddens me.
But in a way that's just the way of the world. We know to credit Pythagorus and Fourier and a few others whose names are attached to their methods. But for the most part we're all constantly standing on the shoulders of anonymous giants whose names are long lost.