On 2024.02.27 14:45, Michał Górny wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
> 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.
> 
> 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
> 
> -- 
> Best regards,
> Michał Górny
> 
> 

Michał,

An excellent piece of prose setting out the rationale.
I fully support it.

-- 
Regards,

Roy Bamford
(Neddyseagoon) a member of
elections
gentoo-ops
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