diff --git a/docs/project/policies/slop.md b/docs/project/policies/slop.md deleted file mode 100644 index 01537fed..00000000 --- a/docs/project/policies/slop.md +++ /dev/null @@ -1,83 +0,0 @@ ---- -title: Generative AI Policy ---- - -It is the opinion of the Board that Large Language Models (LLMs), herein referred -to as Slop Generators, are unsuitable for use as software engineering tools, -particularly in the Free and Open Source Software movement. - -The use of Slop Generators in _any_ contribution to the Asahi Linux project is -expressly forbidden. Their use in any material capacity where code, documentation, -engineering decisions, etc. are largely created with the "help" of a Slop Generators -will be met with a single warning. Subsequent disregard for this policy will be -met with an immediate and permanent ban from the Asahi Linux project and all -associated spaces. - -## Illegal output -All of the popular Slop Generators are trained on an incomprehensibly large corpus -of text. There is ample evidence across the Web of this training material including -copyrighted material, brazenly stolen by the Slop Generator proprietors with -impunity. Due to the nature of Slop Generators, they are prone to regurgitating -their training corpus almost verbatim. This presents a challenge for FOSS projects -in that the use of generated slop is highly likely to violate intellectual property -law by way of regurgitating the aforementioned stolen training material. This -likelihood is proportional to the specificity of the problem area. - -Asahi Linux is a _highly_ specific project, working in esoteric problem spaces -on publicly undocumented hardware. Given the techniques used by Slop Generator -manufacturers, it is not impossible for them to have confidential or leaked -material owned by Apple or its vendor partners in their training corpi. It is -therefore likely that Slop Generators will regurgitate this when queried in just -the right way. We already forbid the use of illegally acquired or leaked -documentation and tooling (e.g. Apple's internal repair diagnostic tools). This -also applies to regurgitated slop. - -FOSS projects like Asahi Linux cannot afford costly intellectual property lawsuits -in US courts. The current political situation in that nation also makes it -incredibly unlikely that any FOSS project would win such a suit regardless of -the quality of its defence. - -## Waste of resources -Slop Generators consume an unfathomable amount of resources we can scarcely afford -to waste. Training, and to a lesser extent inference, require enormous amounts of -energy, water, land, and hardware. Manufacturing the hardware itself requires enormous -amounts of energy, water and minerals. All parts of the Slop Generator supply chain -are environmentally intensive. These resources are better used on quite literally -anything else. - -## LMGTFY -An emerging trend we have observed is people copying user questions or posts into -a Slop Generator, then replying to the post with the generated slop. This is -occurring with increasing frequency, particularly on Reddit. For some people it -is tempting to "help" others and answer questions by feeding them to a LLM and -then posting the answer as-is, or lightly edited at best. If this is you, please -realise that others also have access to the same models as you do, and if they -wanted an answer from one, they could have asked it themselves. Doing this is -exactly as helpful as posting a LMGTFY link, and everyone else _will_ view your -actions as if you did exactly that. - -## It's just matmul -It is very easy to get caught up in the hype that bad actors have built around -Slop Generators. The anthropomorphic presentation of Slop Generators as "agents" -or "assistants" is a very deliberate attempt to manufacture consent for their -integration into workforces at the expense of human interaction. The implication -of some higher degree intelligence or sentience is very much deliberate, and it -is very much false. - -Make no mistake, they cannot think. They cannot reason. They cannot take into -account context. They don't "know" things or have a sense of humour or any of the -other human-centric qualities bad actors would have you believe of them. Slop -Generators are a [chain of matrices in a stochastic system](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain). -The output of a Slop Generator is nothing more than a statistical calculation, -where the next word to be generated is decided by an opaque probabilistic -function dependent on previously generated words. This is fundamentally the -same mathematics that is used to predict the weather. - -A Slop Generator cannot assess the veracity of its claims, nor can it ever -tell you that it simply does not know something. Slop Generators -are often _confidently incorrect_ as a result, and require brow-beating -to admit a mistake. They are therefore highly inappropriate tools in contexts where -truth and correctness are of utmost importance, and when the user is not already -highly knowledgeable and confident in the problem area. This presents a bit of -an issue for Slop Generators; if the user is already highly knowledgeable and -confident in the problem area, then why ask the Slop Generator in the first place?