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

["Michał Górny" <mgorny@gentoo.org>]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 1991 bytes --]

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


[-- Attachment #2: This is a digitally signed message part --]
[-- Type: application/pgp-signature, Size: 512 bytes --]