Outright deny. Innocent until proven guilty, right?
No easy way to prove a commit, or piece of documentation was AI or not.
Seems more like a virtue signaling to me
> a pejorative neologism for the idea that an expression of a moral viewpoint is being done disingenuously
(--Wikipedia. Apparently it was a term was newly invented in 2004 and used by religions in 2010 and 2012. Then a journalist picked it up in 2015. Interesting to see a word so new that isn't a youth thing like yeet!)
How is it disingenuous to ban this, what self-interest do they have in it?
Anyway, the insinuation is that they don't actually believe they can reduce the rate of AI contribution via such a statement, but that they're doing it just for the sake of showing everyone that they're on the anti-AI side of the fence, which indeed does seem to have become some sort of ideological signpost for a certain group of people.
On the other hand it's been my experience that the only people using it unironically as a term are the sorts of people I don't want to talk to for any appreciable length of time, and them self-identifying by using it is extremely handy for me personally.
It's like the reverse Nigerian prince email scam, as soon as someone drops "virtue signaling" I know to immediately disengage lest I be exposed to toxic and deranged opinions that are both low effort and boring to hear litigated.
> some sort of ideological signpost for a certain group of people.
That feels about as laden and insinuating as the formerly religious term from above. Do you think it's not okay to state that a method of creating works may not be used when one believes it to be (*checks the reasons given in the article*) potentially illegal under copyright, unethical in various ways (not sure how to summarize that), as well as exceedingly difficult to get quality output from? One of those reasons seem to me like it would be enough to use as grounds, with the only potentially subjective one being the ethics which would leave two other reasons
I don't have a strong opinion on the ban, in case it seems that way. The reasons make sense to me so while I'm not opposed either, I'm also not a fan of selective enforcement that this runs a risk of, and the world moves on (progress is hard to halt). Perhaps there's an "AI" tool that can be ethical and free of copyright claims, and then the resulting work can be judged by its own merit to resolve the quality concern. So I don't really have a solid opinion either way, it just doesn't seem bad to me to make a statement for what one believes to be right
Edit: perhaps I should bring this back to the original question. Is this virtue signaling if (per my understanding) it is genuine? I've scarcely known open source people (Gentoo isn't corporate, afaik) to have ulterior motives so, to me, the claim feels a bit... negative towards a group trying to do good, I guess?
Instead what does seem to happen quite often is that virtue signaling as an accusation is deployed against a very minor and token gesture of vague social progressiveness or some other ethical position on the part of an entity, usually a business, and the charge is levied at them by people who disagree with whatever stance has been taken. It's not hard to draw a line from this back to the rhetoric around various social issues in recent memory, going back to Nixon's famous "silent majority" concept; that most people agree with the thing you think, as a reactionary, but are "afraid" to say it; it's literally the same thing, the leadership of whatever org is criticized for acting in bad faith and invoking whatever cause, because they couldn't possibly just actually believe in it, it obviously must be a ruse.
I apologize if this is more political than HN likes to get, but it's simply not possible to disentangle the phrase "virtue signaling" from specific kinds of reactionary politics. As to why it's now being deployed in a discussion about AI, I don't particularly think it's a 100% rock solid link to it, but it's one of those things, if one sees smoke, one isn't found wrong if they assume fire.
Anyway that was a lot to say it's pointless culture war bullshit, please keep your innocence.
Actual "virtue signalling" is espousing a position that you don't really believe in because you think it makes you look good.
There's a CYA aspect in one of the three reasons mentioned (copyright concerns), I'm not sure that's necessarily bad if the thing they're banning is objectionable for (in their opinion) also two further reasons