At this point, open-source development itself is being DDoS'ed by LLMs and their human users.

At this point, open-source development itself is being DDoS'ed by LLMs and their human users.

At the risk of being a bit gross: this is the software development version of peeing in the pool. If *one* person does it, it's gross but will probably go unnoticed. However, at this point, it's like having 100 people all lined up on the side of the pool peeing into it in unison. I don't really want to swim in that, do you? And now they've started eyeing the punchbowl and watercoolers too. #AI #AIslop #LLMs

@jzb do we perhaps need an open-source project to create slop-detectors? If they caught even a fraction of the submissions, they'd probably get 99% of the authors. For us to ban.

@jzb do we perhaps need an open-source project to create slop-detectors? If they caught even a fraction of the submissions, they'd probably get 99% of the authors. For us to ban.

@davecb @jzb i've heard from my colleagues who are working on LLM technology that detecting other generative works is something they can do with fairly high accuracy currently.

@davecb Perhaps. Rather than turning it into another spam-type arms race, though, it would be vastly better if humans would exercise some restraint in their use of such tools.

The fact that humans are unlikely to do so suggests that it is wildly irresponsible it is to keep churning out such tools for mass consumption.

@elmiko For now. As I said to @davecb, it will just turn into another spam-type arms race. A technological advance in detecting slop will just lead to technological advances in trying to make slop undetectable. And on and on. We've seen this story before with spam, adware, phishing, etc.

The problem isn't LLMs. It's how people are going to use them. If the evidence is that people will use them irresponsibly, then it's irresponsible to keep advancing the technology and promoting it, IMO.

Perhaps -- maybe -- fans of LLMs will see the maintainers of open-source projects that they care about complaining about the slop deluge and stop throwing slop over the walls, and tell their fellow fans that they should cool it. I'm not optimistic on that point, though, because all evidence so far points to LLM-user culture being one of disrespect for people outside the LLM bubble and flagrant disregard for the concept of consent.

The attitude seems to be "we like this, and so should you, and we're not going to respect your wishes. Now shut up and consume the slop we serve you." I'd love to be proven wrong on this.

@jzb I agree. Alas, a likely way we stop the churning is also called "the next recession". Last year I de-risked my whole portfolio.
I'd genuinely like to see a fix at the supply end, with everyone shunning the owners of the slop factories, but all I could think of was a way to allow projects to work at the demand end, shunning individual slop-producers (:-()

@jzb @davecb i agree, it's a human problem not a technical problem.

> The attitude seems to be "we like this, and so should you, and we're not going to respect your wishes. Now shut up and consume the slop we serve you." I'd love to be proven wrong on this.

i also would love for you to be wrong, but i fear not. humans are not good at self-regulating nor self-reflecting.