AI code bans may be impossible to enforce in the first place
I hate this attitude that if a rule or standard can’t be enforced perfectly, we shouldn’t strive for it. We can’t (reasonably) run an OS free of proprietary software, does that mean the free software movement should just give up?
I think one way is to make people realize that there is a concept in copyright called Threshold of Originality, meaning that because machine generated output in itself is not creative work, it’s not copyrightable. You can do literally anything with it, the licenses attached don’t matter. The GPL is not enforceable and no proprietary EULA is enforceable.
The reason is that it’s based in copyright law but uses it for the community instead of the individual. Without copyright, copyleft has no power.
I have many problems with copyright as it’s currently implemented, but with copyleft it usefully creates a social contract: if you want to be involved for the benefits, you must also uphold the rule of contributing back.
I think of it like age verification. Slipperly slope to a proprietary kernel-level “security compliance module” on all devices, aka the end of general computation.
I’m very critical of AI, but complete bans on AI use are, at the moment, pretty much unenforcable. Not hard to enforce, not impossible to enforce 100%, but completely impossible to enforce in general. There currently is no reliable way to verify if and how much someone used AI, except maybe if you monitor people’s systems (and even with a totalitarian surveilence system, coders will probably be able to bypass it).
Obviously, if someone who has no clue about coding uses it to write the entire code, you notice. But that’s simply not how most coders use AI…
Edit: And additionally, mandating disclosure of AI can make sense, but it can also create the false assumption that codeers/code without any disclosure are verified to not use AI when coding when it simply cannot be verified. It depends entirely on the coder being honest and transperant about their use of AI. And given the passionate pushback, coders are definitely incentiviced to not disclose AI use.
Provenance has never been something you can guarantee with code in an open contribution model (which is not the only way of governing an open source project). For all you know the code could be copy and pasted from a proprietary codebase, or be the product of third party who’s work is being plagiarised by the submitter. A software project is ultimately a community and is build on trust and faith that people are acting in good faith. The kind of person who would deliberately (and gleefully as I’ve seen in some social media posts) go into a community and violate its stated values and standards, no matter how arbitrary and illegitimate they feel those are, has bigger character flaws to worry about than their reliance on stochastic parrots to write code.
‘No AI’ rules are ultimately about fostering certain community values and norms than guaranteeing no LLM code makes it in.
Just want to let you know from my canoebooted laptop that I run a 100% “free as in freedom” OS (trisquel GNU/Linux). Also you have convinced me about striving for a goal instead of doing it perfectly, which is not possible. Well said.
I hate this attitude that if a rule or standard can’t be enforced perfectly, we shouldn’t strive for it.
This is the entire basis for the War on (some) Drugs. Guess what? Drugs won.
Power is nothing without enforceability, and purposely implementing rules or laws that can’t be enforceable is a form of malice and discrimination through selective enforcement.
I hate this attitude that if a rule or standard can’t be enforced perfectly, we shouldn’t strive for it. We can’t (reasonably) run an OS free of proprietary software, does that mean the free software movement should just give up?
“People are going to murder anyway, so why even make murder illegal?”
You are correct, you should make rules even understanding that they will be broken by some.
Yes, debugging with an LLM is absolutely as bad as murder. Probably worse! \s
Not even remotely what I suggested.
I think one way is to make people realize that there is a concept in copyright called Threshold of Originality, meaning that because machine generated output in itself is not creative work, it’s not copyrightable. You can do literally anything with it, the licenses attached don’t matter. The GPL is not enforceable and no proprietary EULA is enforceable.
The entire point of GPL is to forcefully extract copyright out of the code in the first place.
No? The point of the GPL is to leverage such a copyright.
It’s called “copyleft” for a reason.
The reason is that it’s based in copyright law but uses it for the community instead of the individual. Without copyright, copyleft has no power.
I have many problems with copyright as it’s currently implemented, but with copyleft it usefully creates a social contract: if you want to be involved for the benefits, you must also uphold the rule of contributing back.
“Murder bans may be impossible to enforce in the first place”
I think of it like age verification. Slipperly slope to a proprietary kernel-level “security compliance module” on all devices, aka the end of general computation.
I’m very critical of AI, but complete bans on AI use are, at the moment, pretty much unenforcable. Not hard to enforce, not impossible to enforce 100%, but completely impossible to enforce in general. There currently is no reliable way to verify if and how much someone used AI, except maybe if you monitor people’s systems (and even with a totalitarian surveilence system, coders will probably be able to bypass it).
Obviously, if someone who has no clue about coding uses it to write the entire code, you notice. But that’s simply not how most coders use AI…
Edit: And additionally, mandating disclosure of AI can make sense, but it can also create the false assumption that codeers/code without any disclosure are verified to not use AI when coding when it simply cannot be verified. It depends entirely on the coder being honest and transperant about their use of AI. And given the passionate pushback, coders are definitely incentiviced to not disclose AI use.
So how would one enforce this?
It is not that it is very difficult, it is impossible.
“it’s impossible to ensure that no one pisses in the pool, therefore we’re allowing pissing into the pool now”
“we can’t 100% enforce that studenst don’t cheat on exams, so it’s not worth to take a stand against cheating”
Provenance has never been something you can guarantee with code in an open contribution model (which is not the only way of governing an open source project). For all you know the code could be copy and pasted from a proprietary codebase, or be the product of third party who’s work is being plagiarised by the submitter. A software project is ultimately a community and is build on trust and faith that people are acting in good faith. The kind of person who would deliberately (and gleefully as I’ve seen in some social media posts) go into a community and violate its stated values and standards, no matter how arbitrary and illegitimate they feel those are, has bigger character flaws to worry about than their reliance on stochastic parrots to write code.
‘No AI’ rules are ultimately about fostering certain community values and norms than guaranteeing no LLM code makes it in.
Just want to let you know from my canoebooted laptop that I run a 100% “free as in freedom” OS (trisquel GNU/Linux). Also you have convinced me about striving for a goal instead of doing it perfectly, which is not possible. Well said.
This is the entire basis for the War on (some) Drugs. Guess what? Drugs won.
Power is nothing without enforceability, and purposely implementing rules or laws that can’t be enforceable is a form of malice and discrimination through selective enforcement.
People are begging to regulate “AI” when it doesn’t even exist and there’s not even an objective definition.
Absolute recipe for failure or worse.