Servo is about to get sloppy...

Slop • (slang) noun
Unwanted and unasked for AI-generated content

As a rule of thumb, I believe generative AI is bad. Not just because it lies to you about everything all the time point of view. Naw. It's bad for entirely different reasons, too.

• AI purveyors sic their scraping bots on unsuspecting, unconsenting websites
• Violating copyrights to train their models
• Hammering FOSS projects with what equates to DDOS attacks
• Techbros replacing jobs with AI

But when it comes to coding, it's a whole other issue.

AI writing code is an absolute joke. Sure, it might be able to grope its way to an almost decent solution for a problem. But it does so by crunching through hundreds of thousands of stolen examples of human-written code.

That's right. Stolen code.

Microsoft has stolen open source code from their platform GitHub (and from other sources) in order to train their GitHub Copilot models.

But how can you steal open source code?

Simple: by not properly attributing (and licensing) derivative code. If an LLM is trained on code that's licensed under the GPL (or other copyleft) license, then the LLM's output must be licensed under that same license.

This is not optional. They're not generating something new since LLMs are only capable of producing derivative works. Therefore, the use of so-called Generative AI is theft.

Some would say that the words "theft" and "stolen" are too harsh here and the word "plagiarized" would be better. But I'd argue that stolen is the right word as this is code produced from human work that is being exploited by a massive corporation in a way that violates the original license. They are taking, without permission, and profiting from it.

That's why I find it peculiar that Servo–the new-ish independent browser engine that was originally created by Mozilla–is considering allowing generative AI to be used in the coding process of their project.

[The Technical Steering Committee is] now proposing the following changes to our AI policy:

1. Update the AI policy to allow usage of some AI tools to make the project more inclusive and accessible (like using translation tools, tools to improve the language, etc.). These are not related to code contribution directly, but how folks participate in the project.

2. One year testing period that allows Servo maintainers that request it to experiment with GitHub Copilot, after that year and with the experience gained, we will revisit this topic.

It seems unfathomable to me, honestly, that any coder–especially skilled, competent free and open source developers–would want to use something like GitHub Copilot.

I've tried Copilot out of sheer morbid curiosity and, well, it's not good. As I mentioned above, it comes up with a few passable solutions for basic issues. We're talking very basic functions. But in my testing, any solution that requires more than ~60 lines of code and the AI fails. Hard.

The truth of the matter is, AI isn't really intelligence. It's a basic algorithm that produces convincingly "intelligent" responses to prompts. It's a Stochastic Parrot, a deceiver, no more intelligent or trustworthy than the predictive text on your smartphone's virtual keyboard.

And while it can get things right in some limited instances, my experience and the anecdotal evidence from many coders I know have shown that using AI-produced code in production introduces subtle bugs, causes integration issues, and lacks the care, planning, and attention that's needed for deployment and future maintenance.

Granted, Servo is looking to test the usage of GitHub Copilot in their project. Perhaps they'll come to realize that AI-generated code is a mistake.

But the fact that Servo is even considering this disgusts me and is deeply offensive to the spirit of free and open source software.

I can confidently say that there is no ethical usage of GitHub Copilot.

Shame on Servo's Technical Steering Committee for even considering the inclusion of AI slop in their project.

Why do I care?

Well, I have a long and storied history of being a browser nerd. I'm a web developer and I genuinely want Servo to be great. And Ladybird. And Firefox... and Safari. And even Chromium.

What will ruin these projects, though? Generative AI.