Gentoo Linux tells AI-generated code contributions to fork off
AI-generated and assisted code contributions are no longer allowed in the Gentoo Linux distribution.
A ban on AI-made code was originally proposed on February 27 by Michał Górny, a member of Gentoo's council, an elected committee that governs the Linux distro. Górny argued for an AI ban for three major reasons: potential copyright infringement, quality control issues, and ethical considerations over AI's high power consumption and the role of major corporations in shaping the technology.
Copyright is certainly becoming a chronic issue for AI models, which may or may not be trained on protected materials, with Nvidia one of the latest companies to be sued. AI is also known to produce nonsensical text and code, and has even been observed to hallucinate entire software packages.
Beyond banning AI code submissions, Górny said he also wanted Gentoo to offer something unique for the Linux community.
Linuxiac:
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Gentoo Council Implements Ban on AI-Assisted Contributions
Over the past year, artificial intelligence has become an increasingly integral part of the tech ecosystem. This advancement is on its way to revolutionizing how businesses operate, offering enhanced efficiency and automating mundane tasks.
At the same time, however, as AI technologies become deeply ingrained in the tech industry, they also usher in various concerns ranging from ethical dilemmas to potential quality compromises.
In light of this, the Gentoo Council, a pivotal entity in the open-source community, recently made headlines by setting a significant precedent concerning AI-generated content.
It's FOSS News:
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Gentoo Linux Says NO to AI: Bans AI-Generated Code Submissions!
Not a single month goes by without seeing some new lawsuit or another that involves AI spewing out copyrighted content, and the companies behind it being dragged to court to explain themselves (they rarely do).
The world of open-source software development has not been spared either; there have been reports where contributors tried passing off low-quality AI-generated work as their own, which then went on to create issues of their own.
And as it stands, Gentoo Linux has now taken a big step in curbing such AI-generated nonsense. Let's see what they have done.
LWN coverage:
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Gentoo bans AI-created contributions
Gentoo Council member Michał Górny posted an RFC to the gentoo-dev mailing list in late February about banning ""'AI'-backed (LLM/GPT/whatever) contributions"" to the Gentoo Linux project. Górny wrote that the spread of the ""AI bubble"" indicated a need for Gentoo to formally take a stand on AI tools. After a lengthy discussion, the Gentoo Council voted unanimously this week to adopt his proposal and ban contributions generated with AI/ML tools.