[Announcement] AI Generated Content

[sunrat]

For the benefit of our members and readers, the administration team will be closely monitoring and removing any AI-generated posts which are inaccurate, too wordy, not self-identified as AI, or not directly specific to Debian.

We do not allow AI or chatbots to interact with members of these forums without express permission.

We do not allow for any non-human articulated posts.

We MAY allow the use of AI as a tool to better understand a problem, provided that this use has been clearly stated and introduced as part of the discussion.

We do not allow the use of these forums as a dataset or testing bed for AI nor for their engines to relentlessly crawl the forums in excess of 100+ sessions (600 the other day as a matter of fact) which slow the forum down for our actual users. We consider such crawling to be DDoS attacks. In response we no longer send emails to the abuse@ addresses but lookup the provider resource and block their entire ranges. These forums are a human resource and not a data resource. Persons or organizations are encouraged to reach out the administration staff prior to evoking a swath of machines on this resource.

- What is the concern here?

We are finding AI bots or accounts using AI generated content offer questionable understanding of the topics, with poor and misleading advice. Most AI instances do not properly cite sources which would, at least, partially allow for the verification of the information. It is generally expected when giving advice or with second hand material that unknowns and caveats are clearly expressed.
For a relatable example we have a sub-forum set aside here that is specifically designated for the testing branch of Debian. Advice from the testing and bleeding edge of software should never be mixed with or frame advice given to a beginner. AI lacking understanding of this distinction will provide advanced and untested solutions to users asking questions with potentially disastrous results.