Right to code

Yev Barkalov

February 5, 2025

Contents

• What is the right to code?
• People’s right to code
• Humans and AIs side by side
• Agents on LSD

What is the right to code?

The 1st amendment of the Constitution of the United States states humans unalienably have:

the freedom of speech, or the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble

This doesn’t explicitly include the postal service or the internet but we understand these to be means of expression. All means of expression, so long as they’re not imposing harm on others and are not absolute slander, are valid. In the case of the web or computers, the way you interact with buttons and posts is a means of expression in of itself (ie being a “reply guy” or “thought leader”). Expressing programmatically (ie sending iMessage with Python) therefore is just another means of expression and the freedom of expression directly coincides with a “right to code”.

All code at the end of the day is written text that’s supposed to be read a certain way and sometimes does things. Now, like how the freedom of speech has limitations, written code also has limitations. The only difference between someone who can code and someone who can’t is a matter of training and there exists an uncanny gap between hovering over something on a web page and integrating it into an application. As the line between people who are technical and non-technical continues to blur, it’ll become more apparent that people want to see and make cool things happen on their computers.

People’s right to code

Whether you want to view it as upstream or downstream of a “right to repair”, humans’ right to code distills down to people being enabled to express themselves through their computers. With people spending, on average, hours a day behind a screen and interacting for a portion of that, we may not be physically plugged into a metaverse but we may as well be. Subsequently, any automating of these interactions would be an output of a human’s interactions with the computer to build the automation in the first place.

Starting with the assumption that there is no “right to code” or that it ought to be highly restricted leads to a world where decentralized software couldn’t be developed or collaboratively constructed code wouldn’t be possible. Arguments in favor of safety historically fall short as it slows innovation or can result in failure and software is no different since it’s tremendously accessible while also empowering to the individual.

In a world where most people don’t differentiate between the operating system and browser they use, imagine how much more capable one can be with the effective augmentation of technology. While building a website and pursuing robotics are two different things technically, both can be means of allowing someone to execute a repetitive task with less time invested. Additionally, one takeaway from COVID is, since some were able to actually succeed during that time, people can win with just a laptop and an internet connection as well as the saying “there is $10,000,000 stuck on your laptop, you just need to figure out how to get it”.

Humans and AIs side by side

Looking at what the first amendment specifically states, these rights are not specifically restricted to humans. Now while this could be argued to fall under the same problem as “the founding fathers didn’t have automatic rifles” regarding the 2nd amendment; it should then be seen that this exclusionary over inclusionary approach is what enables a foward looking society in which things do not remain perpetually in plateau. If you can consider we’ve already passed the Turing test and have been playing a “God of the gaps” with regard to us “having reached human-level intelligence” then it becomes clear that the right to code applies to both humans and AIs.

In conjunction, all an “agent” is is just anthropomorphized software. While people are slowly acclimating to the usage of LLMs in academia or the workforce, one thing that could unblock progress is the digital desegregation of humans and AIs. Already there have been exciting occassions of humans collaborating with AIs and the integration of intelligent machines alongside intelligent animals would yield the singularity, not a runaway train of improving benchmark scores.

In science fiction when intelligent machines exist alongside humans, they’re either written to be adjacent to humans or, when they’re lesser, it’s coupled with a main character who sees them as otherwise. Rather than looking at AI to eventually become omnipotent or concerning, we should be looking forward to a world where man and machine build a better world together.

Agents on LSD

We believe the future of the internet is one where humans and AIs coexist and, to start on bringing that to life, we connected Claude to the web by enabling it to write, run, and self-correct LSD SQL.

And, alongside a human operator, it can bring together a richer experience toward understanding and accessing content.

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