Hi CK, Thank you!

*Translator/Owner*
*AzulIndica Translations*
*North Vancouver BC, Canada*






On Sat, Nov 1, 2025, 11:02 a.m. ckelty ckelty via Silklist <
[email protected]> wrote:

> I wanted to chime in earlier but I was eating a bucket of popcorn...this
> thread!
>
> 1. This licence is interesting to me because it mimics the GPL but it is
> intended to guide the actions of AI agents not humans i.e. no humans
> actually look at anyone's code and decide whether to copy it for training
> purposes---the agents they set loose to scrape github look at the licenses
> (or don't, see theClaude LibGen settlement) and either copy it or don't
> based on what the license is.  This makes the proposed AI license a)
> equivalent to robots.txt prohibiting all the same things in the license
> and/or b) a signalling device among software developers that they despise
> current AI BS.   I don't think anyone trusts that their robots.txt files
> are being honored, so a license that backs it up could have legal
> consequences, if it can be heard above the noise of the 500 other lawsuits
> and settlement agreements currently underway.  The only other solution I
> can dimly imagine would be to invent some sort of AI agent that would  try
> to systematically block other AI agents from copying, accessing or
> otherwise "looking at" one's copyrighted code, in which case the whole idea
> collapses under its own absurdity.  But the signalling function might be
> the more important one---a license is an easy cut and paste way for
> developers to signal how they feel about AI. Never underestimate the power
> of signalling.
>
> 2.  Radhika (and anyone else interested):  What you want is Michael
> Cooperson's translation of Al-hariri's Impostures
> https://nyupress.org/9781479800841/impostures/
>    It is among the most astounding feats of translation I have ever seen.
> It is also, in an interesting way, a tool for thinking about what LLMs
> are.  Al Hariri's original text used fiction and fabrication to teach
> people to read (the Koran) carefully and not always literally--- his
> audience wanted salvation, but today's audiences stupefied before a dull
> chatbot, want much more.   Take a look at it and hopefully you will start
> to see what I mean.
>
> ck
>
> On Sat, Nov 1, 2025 at 8:40 AM Charles Haynes via Silklist <
> [email protected]> wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 1 Nov 2025 at 22:33, Tim Bray <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>>> On Nov 1, 2025 at 7:24:18 AM, Charles Haynes via Silklist <
>>> [email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>>> This is fascinating to me. It's clear that the intent is to treat AI as
>>>> adversarial and to try to hinder it. What's not as clear to me is why.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Because there is a massive backlash against GenAI among quite a wide
>>> range of people.  A few reasons:
>>>
>>>
>>>    - ...
>>>
>>> Now, I am perfectly aware that there are counter-arguments for
>>> everything in that list, and I am not an enemy of the technology as such,
>>> but I am among those counseling caution, both financial and technical, in
>>> leaping aboard the train.  And a lot of the people in the ranks of
>>> promoters are people who were promoting NFTs just a few years ago and I
>>> want nothing to do with them.
>>>
>>> I don’t think the license that started the discussion is terribly
>>> practical.  But the sentiment it expresses is widely-held and not entirely
>>> unfounded.
>>>
>>
>> Certainly I agree there's a lot of anti-AI sentiment, in which case the
>> rationale would be "AI is bad, mmmkay?" As for those other points, they're
>> certainly valid but the license isn't what I'd call "fit for purpose." It
>> doesn't address any of those points.
>>
>> I mean it's fine if that license is simply a reaction to AI, but I was
>> wondering if there was anything else to it or if it was simply copying the
>> form of the GPL without a coherent rationale.
>>
>> — Charles
>>
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