From 2879c925969b9c087e80d514395142ddbfd7e2d1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: vleermuis-admin Date: Fri, 1 May 2026 16:51:03 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 1/3] clean up the "why not llms" section to have more brought overarching categories and a prologue --- README.md | 56 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++--------------------- 1 file changed, 35 insertions(+), 21 deletions(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 045d024..dfde1cd 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1287,7 +1287,19 @@ All-in-one solutions for stitching together a desktop. # Why not LLMs? -Could use some help writing this with concrete receipts on environmental, social, political, and economic/labor harms. +As a brief explanation of the reasoning behind, we are against AI for the following reasons: + +- legal issues +- ethical issues +- poor code quality + +We've broken down all of those sections and more below, but before you dive into that, one of the common questions and discussions that happens here is, "if something ever had slop in it, how can it ever be good again?" and that's usually in relation to projects that have dropped AI or projects that are forks of something that once had AI in it. We believe strongly that you can always be better and you can also reduce harm. In the same way you wouldn't consider a vegetarian "not a vegetarian" because they once ate meat even though they no longer eat meat, we don't consider a project permenantly tainted if they once used AI but now do not. + +You can always be a better person and communities can always be better communities. + +We don't gatekeep being better. + +Please feel free to open pull requests if you'd like to add more data to any section below, or if you have a suggestion for another section that you think would be helpful to include. ## Legal Ramifications @@ -1319,25 +1331,6 @@ AI companies use data from across the web for training their models, most often FOSS projects listed in this repo are using tooling that blatantly disregard licensing and violate of Codes of Conduct, making said tools antithetical to FOSS' purpose. -## Environmental Impact - -To start learning a bit more, you can checkout the wikipedia page on [Environmental impact of artificial intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_artificial_intelligence#Individual_level). We're very open to people contributing other explanations, links, and resources to learn more about this. Here's what we've gathered so far: - -- [MIT News: Generative AI’s environmental impact](https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117) -- [MIT Technology Review: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.](https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/) - -## Labor - -AI usage and normalization contributes to labor violations in many ways that are obvious and some you may not be aware of. - -On one hand, many things that you think are "AI" are actually humans in another country pretending to be an AI chatbot for you for either extremely low wages or in some cases, no wages e.g. prison labor. This is particularly common for "friend"/"sex" bots, but it is also extremely common in the image/video identification. You can find a bit more info at the following links: - -- [Long hours and low wages: the human labour powering AI’s development](https://theconversation.com/long-hours-and-low-wages-the-human-labour-powering-ais-development-217038) -- [OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic](https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/) -- ['AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back](https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-workers-who-train-ai-are-fighting-back/) -- [These Prisoners Are Training AI: In high-wage Finland, where clickworkers are rare, one company has discovered a novel labor force—prisoners.](https://web.archive.org/web/20260108224812/https://www.wired.com/story/prisoners-training-ai-finland/) -- [Amazon grocery stores previously reported to use AI actually used people in India](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4?op=1) - ## Poor Code Quality Vibe coding / agentic workflows result in poorer code quality, and relaxed oversight practices. These effects may be compounded by the common practice of using additional LLM-based tooling to provide code-reviews. @@ -1367,7 +1360,28 @@ This also often results in massive security holes. * [In a study evaluating over 500k code samples, LLM-generated code was found to contain more high-risk security vulnerabilities than human-generated code](https://arxiv.org/abs/2508.21634) * [LLMs make up package names, making them vulnerable to incorporating malicious code in "slopsquatting" attacks](https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/12/ai_code_suggestions_sabotage_supply_chain/) ([Arxiv study](https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.10279)) -## Health and Safety +## Ethical Issues + +### Environmental Impact + +To start learning a bit more, you can checkout the wikipedia page on [Environmental impact of artificial intelligence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_artificial_intelligence#Individual_level). We're very open to people contributing other explanations, links, and resources to learn more about this. Here's what we've gathered so far: + +- [MIT News: Generative AI’s environmental impact](https://news.mit.edu/2025/explained-generative-ai-environmental-impact-0117) +- [MIT Technology Review: We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard.](https://www.technologyreview.com/2025/05/20/1116327/ai-energy-usage-climate-footprint-big-tech/) + +### Labor + +AI usage and normalization contributes to labor violations in many ways that are obvious and some you may not be aware of. + +On one hand, many things that you think are "AI" are actually humans in another country pretending to be an AI chatbot for you for either extremely low wages or in some cases, no wages e.g. prison labor. This is particularly common for "friend"/"sex" bots, but it is also extremely common in the image/video identification. You can find a bit more info at the following links: + +- [Long hours and low wages: the human labour powering AI’s development](https://theconversation.com/long-hours-and-low-wages-the-human-labour-powering-ais-development-217038) +- [OpenAI Used Kenyan Workers on Less Than $2 Per Hour to Make ChatGPT Less Toxic](https://time.com/6247678/openai-chatgpt-kenya-workers/) +- ['AI Is African Intelligence': The Workers Who Train AI Are Fighting Back](https://www.404media.co/ai-is-african-intelligence-the-workers-who-train-ai-are-fighting-back/) +- [These Prisoners Are Training AI: In high-wage Finland, where clickworkers are rare, one company has discovered a novel labor force—prisoners.](https://web.archive.org/web/20260108224812/https://www.wired.com/story/prisoners-training-ai-finland/) +- [Amazon grocery stores previously reported to use AI actually used people in India](https://www.businessinsider.com/amazons-just-walk-out-actually-1-000-people-in-india-2024-4?op=1) + +### Health and Safety There's been a number of high profile incidents that have resulted in endangerment or death. Here's some examples: From f218812c742de191c4a06d450116b4ebf1195b96 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: vleermuis-admin Date: Fri, 1 May 2026 16:54:14 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 2/3] add removal requirements as super script --- README.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index dfde1cd..8356050 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1293,7 +1293,7 @@ As a brief explanation of the reasoning behind, we are against AI for the follow - ethical issues - poor code quality -We've broken down all of those sections and more below, but before you dive into that, one of the common questions and discussions that happens here is, "if something ever had slop in it, how can it ever be good again?" and that's usually in relation to projects that have dropped AI or projects that are forks of something that once had AI in it. We believe strongly that you can always be better and you can also reduce harm. In the same way you wouldn't consider a vegetarian "not a vegetarian" because they once ate meat even though they no longer eat meat, we don't consider a project permenantly tainted if they once used AI but now do not. +We've broken down all of those sections and more below, but before you dive into that, one of the common questions and discussions that happens here is, "if something ever had slop in it, how can it ever be good again?" and that's usually in relation to projects that have dropped AI or projects that are forks of something that once had AI in it. We believe strongly that you can always be better and you can also reduce harm. In the same way you wouldn't consider a vegetarian "not a vegetarian" because they once ate meat even though they no longer eat meat, we don't consider a project permenantly tainted if they once used AI but now do not See our [removal requirements](https://codeberg.org/small-hack/open-slopware/src/branch/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#removal) for more details. You can always be a better person and communities can always be better communities. From 4b3334d7a69f30f93f23450c51c23c7013b028a7 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: vleermuis-admin Date: Sat, 2 May 2026 23:09:32 +0200 Subject: [PATCH 3/3] missing word --- README.md | 2 +- 1 file changed, 1 insertion(+), 1 deletion(-) diff --git a/README.md b/README.md index 8356050..518db2d 100644 --- a/README.md +++ b/README.md @@ -1287,7 +1287,7 @@ All-in-one solutions for stitching together a desktop. # Why not LLMs? -As a brief explanation of the reasoning behind, we are against AI for the following reasons: +As a brief explanation of the reasoning behind this repo, we are against AI for the following reasons: - legal issues - ethical issues