Re: [gentoo-dev] RFC: banning "AI"-backed (LLM/GPT/whatever) contributions to Gentoo

[Sam James <sam@gentoo.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 2465 bytes --]

Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org> writes:

> Hello,
>
> Given the recent spread of the "AI" bubble, I think we really need to
> look into formally addressing the related concerns.  In my opinion,
> at this point the only reasonable course of action would be to safely
> ban "AI"-backed contribution entirely.  In other words, explicitly
> forbid people from using ChatGPT, Bard, GitHub Copilot, and so on, to
> create ebuilds, code, documentation, messages, bug reports and so on for
> use in Gentoo.
>
> Just to be clear, I'm talking about our "original" content.  We can't do
> much about upstream projects using it.
>

I agree with the proposal, just some thoughts below.

I'm a bit worried this is slightly performative - which is not a dig at
you at all - given we can't really enforce it, and it requires honesty,
but that's also not a reason to not try ;)

>
> Rationale:
>
> 1. Copyright concerns.  At this point, the copyright situation around
> generated content is still unclear.  What's pretty clear is that pretty
> much all LLMs are trained on huge corpora of copyrighted material, and
> all fancy "AI" companies don't give shit about copyright violations.
> In particular, there's a good risk that these tools would yield stuff we
> can't legally use.
>

It also makes risk for anyone basing products or tools on Gentoo if
we're not confident about the integrity / provenance of our work.

> 2. Quality concerns.  LLMs are really great at generating plausibly
> looking bullshit.  I suppose they can provide good assistance if you are
> careful enough, but we can't really rely on all our contributors being
> aware of the risks.
>
> 3. Ethical concerns.  As pointed out above, the "AI" corporations don't
> give shit about copyright, and don't give shit about people.  The AI
> bubble is causing huge energy waste.  It is giving a great excuse for
> layoffs and increasing exploitation of IT workers.  It is driving
> enshittification of the Internet, it is empowering all kinds of spam
> and scam.
>
>
> Gentoo has always stood out as something different, something that
> worked for people for whom mainstream distros were lacking.  I think
> adding "made by real people" to the list of our advantages would be
> a good thing — but we need to have policies in place, to make sure shit
> doesn't flow in.
>
> Compare with the shitstorm at:
> https://github.com/pkgxdev/pantry/issues/5358

[-- Attachment #2: signature.asc --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 377 bytes --]