My desire to use Mastodon is basically at zero now because post-"Claude", hanging out here means inevitably I'm going to have a conversation with someone who tolerates, or even uses, "generative AI". And what's the point of being in a community where that's a risk. Interestingly* there is absolutely no chance of this on Bluesky, because there are artists there

* And oddly, given how "AI"-brained the *admins* there are

No longer interested in talking about open source unless the conversation starts with how to build an alternate open source community without "AI code assistant" users contributing to it
@mcc Sadly the Copilot monster came to #FreeBSD on GitHub last week.
@bms48 @mcc Wait, how did copilot "come" to FreeBSD ?
@trashheap @mcc The LLM-driven entity is submitting AI slop bug reports and "reviews".

@bms48 @mcc Ewww...

Last I heard FreeBSD was working on a draft policy. that was leaning towards actually banning LLM code. (This was discussed at BSDCan last year). That hasn't changed has it?

@trashheap @bms48 last I heard netbsd had done this but don't cite me
@mcc @trashheap @bms48 last summer FreeBSD leaned strongly towards no (see https://reviews.freebsd.org/D50650 ), but the more recent "accepted" change is weaker (see https://reviews.freebsd.org/D54817 ). I don't like the weasel words in the newer proposal, and the proposed "developer's guide" doc (which you have to be logged in to see) is overlong and makes it too easy to miss the actual point.
@fedward @mcc @trashheap You're not going to like this, but there are FreeBSD folk who are looking to leverage Generative AI, but in a very limited and targeted way, e.g. automated code reviews. We would aim to do it in a controlled way away from Microsoft's monopolistic interest as Douglas #Rushkoff predicted would happen. It isn't a strict go/no-go area. The UK CDPA act does offer copyright protection to GenAI content but the key test is originality (system prompts must be very specific).
@bms48 @fedward @trashheap My goal is to have no "genAI"-emitted code on my computer. If FreeBSD uses the lie machine to review code but not to write it, then I'd consider using FreeBSD, but would possibly not send PRs back upstream (the environmental impact of LLMs can be heavy and I'd prefer not to take any action that could result in an LLM query) and the idea of an open source project I can't contribute back up to is weird.
@bms48 @fedward @trashheap This said tho there's the bigger problem of long term trust. Once "AI" is inside an organization it spreads. If you've accepted this is a real technology which is okay to use and the question is just where and how much is appropriate, then "how much" will increase until it's on the table everywhere for everything. The people in the org who already want to use more of it will win more and more arguments over time because hey, you agreed to it *last* time, why not now.
@bms48 @fedward @trashheap I've already switched from Windows to Linux to get away from "AI" features and now have to switch away from Linux for the same reason. Each switch is disruptive. If FreeBSD is just going to be like Linux and just be two years *slower* in adopting "AI" than the other thing, it's not clear why I bother with FreeBSD. It's not like I'm interested in your OS on the merits. If I cared about product merits and not the ethical/political dimension I'd probs still be using Mac.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap I hate to keep invoking Robert Heinlein here, but he said it best: TANSTAAFL: There ain't no such thing as a free lunch. And Atkinson’s Casket, Sept. 1833, has ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’
@bms48 @fedward @trashheap Okay, well possibly the price of liberty is not using FreeBSD. And maybe if I go with NetBSD instead of FreeBSD I don't waste two years learning something I'm going to throw away.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap Not to disrespect NetBSD in any way, but it's kind of niche unless you're working for certain storage companies. Are you proposing to become some kind of tech Amish? No offence intended, but... I'm not vegan for similar reasons. If an LLM used in a limited way can help us ship features more quickly, then that has to be balanced against other concerns like how it was trained. Don't forget I have skin in the game against OpenAI and Microsoft who trained AI in violation.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap To be frank, everything I know/do and action items wind up in a genai-todo.txt file I haven't found time to action yet. I am tracking the Cloudflare C++ developers, macOS guys at Apple too, who seem to have success with Claude under Opencode.ai which is a bit of a sandbox. The thought of stuff like Codex, Cursor or OpenClaw just scares the hell out of me, it's too much INFOSEC and OPSEC risk to use those tools. Cursor forks VS Code and that is just a big ball of crap.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap From Ed Zitron's latest post today: https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-ai-industry-is-lying-to-you/ "I’m sure there are software engineers using these models ethically, who read all the code, who have complete industry over it and use it as a means of handling very specific units of work that they have complete industry over." This. This is what we are aiming at, and how the Cloudflare team wield it, and how I intend to wield it. But Huang wants you to take out a mortgage and keep vibe-coding.
The AI Industry Is Lying To You

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Ed Zitron's Where's Your Ed At
@mcc @fedward @trashheap So there is a real argument to be made here that LLMs are the technology of mean reversion. They favour what they have been trained on. They are stochastic parrots in the sense that @emilymbender has been warning us all about. When such a thing is wielded in a very targeted way, it might yield a small economic benefit, but again, this largely accrues to the elite. I have code in iOS and macOS myself, so I probably do qualify as that; I am not your average bear.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap https://rushkoff.substack.com/p/is-ai-the-next-dumbwaiter "The tech bros may seem like change agents because they are so hell-bent on exponential growth. Because they argue for total deregulation to fuel their AIs with data and energy. They act as if they are the advocates for runaway progress, but they’re not! ... They want to preserve their monopolies before the rest of us figure this stuff out or, better, use their AIs to actually innovate. Get it?" Use quantum jiu-jitsu against the deskilling trend.
Is AI the next Dumbwaiter?

The demand for AI's unbridled growth is reactionary — a way of doubling down on the same old colonizing way of doing things. It doesn't have to be.

Rushkoff
@bms48 @mcc @trashheap you've cited this twice today in these replies, but it's on Substack and I'm not going to read it because I don't go to the Nazi bar.
@fedward @mcc @trashheap Internet Archive and Archive.today are equally valid approaches. It's still no reason to deprive yourself of what Rushkoff has to say, and he's been doing this for 30 years now. But thanks for the feedback on Substack. A friend said I should publish technical writings and whitepapers there. Managed WordPress hosting hits the price point for me.
Wikipedia blacklists Archive.today, starts removing 695,000 archive links

If DDoSing a blog wasn't bad enough, archive site also tampered with web snapshots.

Ars Technica
@mcc @fedward @trashheap The term "quantum jiu-jitsu" was coined by former Canadian intelligence analyst W.R. Clement in his obscure yet seminal work "Quantum Jump" which I urge you all to read.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap If GenAI and the fact that the genie is now out of the bottle is your beef, your options are going to be increasingly limited. Hence my comment re becoming "tech amish". The position is far more nuanced than go/no-go. And Rushkoff predicts the new trend quite well. If you want bigtech GenAI takedown, you could do worse than read Ed Zitron on this. I know I have. Cover to cover.
@bms48 @mcc @trashheap I think that's a mischaracterization of what's being said here. I believe there are two main points of opposition (if I may, and I hope *I'm* not mischaracterizing in this summary):

1. No amount of risk associated with generative AI/LLM contributions is acceptable (where risk includes potential copyright or license issues as well as the risk of introduced bugs or vulnerabilities);
2. Merely participating in the project shouldn't incur more LLM usage.

To the first point, the legal framework in the UK is only material for users in the UK; US courts haven't yet established enough precedent on whether machine generated code is even copyrightable. The EU also seems to be leaning towards "uncopyrightable," but also hasn't fully established rules. The more those contributions are accepted now, before a legal framework is fully established, the greater the risk not just assumed by developers but pushed out towards users who may not have the same appetite for that risk. And that doesn't even account for the bugs. Or the new bugs the LLMs produce when they're told to fix the old ones.

To the second point, the current stance of a nonzero number of developers is that the barn door, having been forced open, shouldn't be allowed to close again, and they like to call people luddites if they are worried about the conditions under which new horses are to be introduced. I don't know why the people who don't care about moral or legal issues with LLM usage are the only people whose opinion seems to matter.
@mcc @fedward @trashheap We won't be turning over our critical faculties to a stochastic parrot. I could say more but it would probably just sound like "trust me bro" and I would rather be able to give a stronger guarantee than that. I can only really speak for myself and my own projects. FWIW I will be doing copyright assignment to a company I direct for my open source work for now on, and making use of my professional indemnity insurance.