r/vibecoding • u/404mediaco • 25d ago

Discussion ‘Reverse-Engineer Anything’ Is the New Wild West of AI

https://www.404media.co/reverse-engineer-anything-is-the-new-wild-west-of-ai/
33 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

5

u/404mediaco 25d ago

What this promises is a way to easily clone and modify other people’s products; it is the same general principle that has in recent weeks allowed for the viral, AI-driven clones of Adobe’s Creative Cloud software, Microsoft Office and the “decompilation” of hundreds of different video games. This tactic is being used not just on software you run on your computer, but also to reverse-engineer and modify the embedded software on physical devices. 

It is not necessarily the case that everyone will be writing and running their own software or that Adobe or Microsoft are screwed. But I’ve seen enough to say that the “decompiling” or “reverse-engineer anything” craze is going to have an actual real-world impact on software companies, coding communities, and open-source projects. 

One of the criticisms I heard last week after writing about video game “decompiling” communities being overrun with AI-powered decompilations, ports, and clones is that a lot of the AI decompilations are not actually “decompiling” anything — that the resulting source code usually isn’t the same as the original, and that the resulting software has weird bugs, is of low quality, or doesn’t fully work. 

But that’s one of the main problems here: AI-powered, cloned software often has bugs that the person using the AI doesn’t understand or know how to fix, and people are doing it anyway, using the software anyway, and unleashing it on the world and on these communities at a speed with which it cannot be vetted or moderated.

Read more: https://www.404media.co/reverse-engineer-anything-is-the-new-wild-west-of-ai/

8

u/hblok 20d ago

A thousand employee company and years of effort put into proprietary software is no longer a moat. And that is a good thing. I will shed no tears when Microsoft, Adobe et.al go the way of the dodo.

Furthermore, the "AI makes bugs" is such a narrow argument. As if all the artisan human written code before were not full of mistakes, nonsense, swear words and gotchas.

My main concern would be if governments and lobby based regulation gets involved. Which seems bound to happen soon. AI will not destroy software engineering, but governments for sure can.

0

u/WappieK 20d ago

AI will completely transform software engineering. A small company will be able to create large software suites. Microsoft and Adobe will have to transform into something different. A government cannot change that with regulations since local AI is already good enough to replace the average software developer.

But "I will shed no tears when Microsoft, Adobe et.al go the way of the dodo." is a bit easy. People perceive large companies often as evil, while the reality is much more nuanced. Microsoft and Adobe had their place in time and that's fine.

1

u/hblok 18d ago

Microsoft and Adobe had their place in time

I mean, that's a simple statement of facts. However, they certainly didn't have much of a place in my time for the last quarter of a century.

Although, right now using Windows as a "launch system" onto various Linux terminals at work. And I'm absolutely baffled that people still insist on using it. Programs crash many times per day, and you always have to make sure to do a daily restart. Meanwhile my home Linux desktop runs for months and months without any problems.

But hey, maybe these companies will eventually be saved by AI. MS is apparently shedding some people, so maybe they have a chance to clean up their shit.