Based on recent comments this feels like a discussion we should have. So…topic, basically.
I’m looking to be chief noisemaker on this, but I stand by what I wrote in !privacy and what’s in my post history.
https://lemmy.ml/post/48724623/26190950
Let’s have at; do we want a [AI] and [NOT AI] tag. Why or why not?
Having the tags is nice, but I don’t think mandating it is the way to go.
People who hate AI to the bitter end will use a [NOT AI] tag and signalize people who think alike that this status of the project will most likely never change.
Other people might happily tell everyone the used AI and use the respective tag as well.
But most people don’t care and wouldn’t use either. This also means that a project that currently uses no AI, but does not use the tag might do so in the future, which is also an important information - for the AI haters.
/r/selfhosted has an automod comment that creates a place to disclose how genAI/LLMs were used in the project and the post. I like that.
I wonder if the tools for lemmy are up to the task yet… will have to look into it
That seems a lot more useful than binary tags. There’s a wide spectrum between fully vibe-coded slop and hand-written with vim.
No - the rabid AI hate here is… ridiculous. This only feeds it.
I hate python. Just hate it. Should I require that everyone posting indicates what language they use so that I can properly hate on the python projects?
Besides - how are you defining “AI”? Used to help? Writes the entire thing? Used for auto-complete? Should we really be gatekeeping like this? In 10 years it’ll become rare to find anything not using AI anyway. The rabid AI haters will always be around though.
I ran into someone who was adamant he wouldn’t use anything that touched AI.
I showed him how the fediverse app he was using to tell me that he wouldnt use AI had AI involvement.
He’s still using it.
If youre trying to call me out for calling them out, its not the same and this falls flat.
These are all saying things and the world can and should be better.
This guy said I wont use anything that AI had any involvement in.
It’d be like saying I wont use an iPhone because apple is evil while using an iPhone.
Not apple really needs to do better, im not happy with some things they do, while using an iPhone.
I hate python. Just hate it.
:(
I hate it when the default state is turned into the negative. Every time I have to specify “unsweet tea” I feel the sands of my lifeforce slipping away.
I agree with others who said AI tag for AI helped projects, no tags for normal projects.
I think you might need both for the tag bot to work properly but dunno.
@curbstickle@anarchist.nexus - as per your suggestion, here is the AI tags discussion, which I imagine you’ve been eyeballing.
I don’t know where this leaves the community, nor how many responders are part of the community vs lookie loos. I would have put up a staw poll but that likely wouldn’t have helped much, signal:noise wise.
As the mod, do you have a read on all this or a preferred direction going forward?
As I already mentioned, I won’t be putting anything up for the week as the other rule gets closed out to not inundate, so do not expect any action this week.
That said, it absutely confirmed my expectations, and I’ll be looking into some automod options and discussing with the .world team to find out if there are any known issues with them, so that a few options can be presented in the next sticky.
So state of play / preview of coming attractions - yes to tags, once tagged, cannot complain about said tagged content. Formal sticky etc next week.
PS: I took a look at r/selfhosted - their bot seems to delete ALL new project posts and requires user to appeal / resubmit / verify directly. I think that’s problematic (and ironic, if you think about it - you’re trying to litigate ai/no ai with a bot) but not my circus, not my monkeys.
Yeah that’s not a method I’m interested in. A comment for OP to post under? Yep.
We’ll see what works for folks next week.
I think the reality is that people will downvote the AI posts, and that will incentivise people to not disclose it or outright lie. The other thing that came to mind here is the fact that I’ve been trying to set my RSS reader up to not show me anything if AI is mentioned. It turns out that I haven’t been able to do that because it couldn’t discern “AI” from “fair”, “pair”, “air” etc. but the sentiment was there because I’m sick of hearing about it, and I imagine a lot of people are. This could cause readers or whatever else is configured to block AI content to block the non-ai content too, just because it’s mentioned. Additionally it does bring AI to the forefront, which doesn’t help with that AI fatigue.
Ironically…a llm is probably an excellent tool to prefetch your content, perform sentiment analysis and then sanitise the content to your liking.
😂 yes indeed!
Me: I’m sick of hearing about AI. It’s very existence brings me down. It’s bad for the environment, bad for code, bad for mental illness, bad for humans.
AI: Sorry to interrupt, but have you considered using AI to help with this matter?
Legitimately, I agree it would be a good use, but I will be sticking with non-AI solutions regardless.
Hey, even Che Guvera wore a Rolex. :)
PS: I think you’re circling something though - people are objecting to the idea of what they think AI is, based on emotional appeal. It’s a category error.
As in - you know damn well that the correct tool for sentiment analysis is an LLM but you’d rather avoid using it because … whatever.
It’s that “because whatever” I’m pointing at, because right now it’s unexamined and at best scores you a pyrrhic victory.
(You in the general sense, not you you).
Because use of AI is bad for me. YMMV.
I’m midly curious as to how.
How would (say) you using Qwen 3.5 4B be bad for you (specifically) in this case?
Qwen’s open weights, already trained, runs locally on your rig, doesn’t leak PII to the cloud and does the job.
Surely if AI discussion in feeds is causing grief, anything that removes that for you (your stated intention) is “good” for you?
I find that whenever I have used AI to find a solution, I have forfeited learning, so I avoid it completely so that I can learn about the thing that AI would have otherwise shortcut for me. Regarding this specific example, while it may or may not be the case that AI is the best tool for sentiment analysis, it’s not the best or most efficient tool for keyword filtering, and keyword filtering is all I’d really need. In the event that I cared enough about the filtering to find or build a solution, it wouldn’t be with AI for this reason, but also because of the aforementioned reasons. Even if they’re not applicable to this very scenario, I’d rather not involve myself in the technology at all if I can help it.
Can we talk shop? I don’t want to come across as badgering you if you’re happy to put a pin in it, but I think this is a bad take. Like, if you’re going to try and solve this with Regex soup and spite, it’s going to hurt.
What happens if Codex, Claude, Cursor, LLM or phrases like “machine learning”, “generatative ai” etc are mentioned?
Or when someone wants to have a discussion like this?
\bAI\b will miss almost all of it.
Note: I have no stake in you using or not using AI, an I am not trying to convert you to the church of Latter day Aiology. I am simply trying to [
]avoid doing real work[] chat.
“Small,” non-generative, BERT-like models, would probably be more appropriate.
Anthropic does sentiment analysis with regex in Claude Code though ¯\(ツ)/¯
Hmm, can I RegEx this?
[\s-]AI[-,\.\s]This is assuming it’s not at the start of the article.
I feel it’s a little dangerous, because it would give a false sense of security in [no-ai] projects.
We have all seen tons of projects 100% written without any AI that are very poorly coded and full of insecurities.
I personally don’t think so. For me it would be an indicator that the project is new, doesn’t have a lot of support and just looks shiny.
Or you don’t allow AI
I’d like tags for used electricity, or didn’t use electricity. Also whether they used a computer. Maybe a tag for whether they had a friend help, or did it solo? Oh, I know, a tag for whether they consumed oxygen.
I’m up voting this twice.
[DOUBLE RAINBOW]
No tag for not AI.
Only AI tags needed, which helps remind people that slop should be warned against. We don’t need to warn for slop free apps
But wouldn’t that be far more useful? Many people seem to be looking for projects who don’t ever touch AI. Devs who use a [No AI] tag show that they follow the same agenda and most likely will not change their opinion on the next release.
No, because the absence of the tag indicates it’s free of AI
Or that the author didn’t know about the rule?
That’s why we have mods
Or…we could make it easier for them and make the use of the tag a conscious decision indicating something instead of relying on the mod’s voluntary work to correct for an implied meaning.
We could make it easier for mods by reporting articles to the mod.
Even better: We could mandate every post to put [Moderate This] at the end if they don’t follow the rules.
Having the tags? Sure.
Making them mandatory? Only if we have 1.- an actual process to determine whether a tag is incorrectly applied (up to a respectable level of confidence) and 2.- an adequate, *enforceable+ punishment for infringers.
I would love to see an [AI] tag, so I can easily hide it. Coupled with temporary bans in case of missing disclosure it would really sanitize the community
I feel like this could lead to discrimination and prejudice against ai users. It should have been implemented years ago.
To clarify…you in favour of discrimination and prejudice against ai users?
I am as well.
Why’s that?
Yes. They should be told to sit in the corner with a big cone shaped hat on like the old days.
If you make a tag for AI, what’s the purpose of making everything people want to see explicitly say (not AI)?
People that want to use that shit, need to learn to be upfront about and realistic about how the vast majority of people view AI produced… Well, ai anything.
If you make a tag for AI, what’s the purpose of making everything people want to see explicitly say (not AI)?
Nominally, to avoid discrimination.
People that want to use that shit, need to learn to be upfront about and realistic about how the vast majority of people view AI produced… Well, ai anything.
Thing is, I don’t think people actually know how AI is used. At all. I think they know how AI is used to create slop.
And if they can already spot that, then why should things be tagged in the first place?
Do want want to see this?
- [AI] Jellyfin
- [AI] Home Assistant
- [AI] Immich
Because, going by the letter of the law, there’s a better than fair chance those projects have used AI - githubs own stats support that.
https://github.blog/news-insights/research/survey-ai-wave-grows/
https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2025/ai
97%. That’s Github’s number
Discrimination, that’s hilarious.
Okay, let’s say AI is as prevalent as you say it is. Make everyone disclose it, so that us so-called Luddites can see how ridiculous we are for trying to avoid it. And so that people who like AI software can more easily find it. Those people exist, right? Since AI is inevitable and all?
Oh you wanna snark?
Sure, let’s just tag everything then. 97% of projects tagged. (I cited 2 sources to back that number up btw and I resent your implication that I made it up out of whole cloth).
Boom - done. You want all AI touched projects tagged, wish granted.
Hey, let’s tag posts with [USES ELECTRICITY] too while we’re at it. That’ll be equally fucking useful.
People don’t want an [AI] tag. They want a [SLOP] tag. Guess what - you can’t have it.
Do you think slop merchants will tag their posts with [SLOP]? No?
Do you need a tag to detect slop code? No? Then what the fuck is the point of tagging anything?
[AI] and [SLOP] aren’t in the same universe, and a tag can’t distinguish them.
You’re going to have people honestly trying to disclose AI use, only to get heckled, because Lemmy is so delightfully unbiased on anything AI.
Brilliant - that will do wonders for engagement.
So the alternative is to tiptoe around and pretend you’re not using this amazing revolutionary technology that’s so great?
No one has to do that for any other technology. Wonder why.
I’ll preface by saying I’m heavily against anything LLM generated and in a perfect world we’d have a full clean divide, just so my comment can be viewed in context.
I can’t speak to them all but I would not count Jellyfin as coded by AI based on their standards. Yes, people have likely used LLM “tools” to write code they submit, but they expect a human to understand the code/request, understand it’s purpose, what the code is doing, and explain the PR. A human is expected to fully own the work.
There’s no way to enforce that as much as I wish, but I think it’s a fair distinction between what would get an [AI] tag and and [Not AI] tag. Is a human expected to fully own and understand it, or is LLM code just accepted as is without full oversight and understanding.
Fair. So we’re talking about slop - and I agree.
Next question then becomes: does [AI] meta-tag in any way help you discern slop from non slop? There are comments and proposals in favour of it.
The counter argument is - slop is obvious…and even if it isn’t (and your going stick the thing on your own rig), you should probably do your due diligence first…which will uncover issues.
At which point, a scarlett letter isn’t going to do anything useful, and may unfairly tarnish projects.
That 97% stat was from 2 years ago. It’s surely higher now.
I don’t think [AI] tag works, for a number of reasons, as others have identified. But the topic keeps popping up here and there, so it’s worth mulling over.
I refer to my original point I personally think anything LLM generated is slop and would certainly prefer to have literally any and every LLM generated code marked so I can avoid it. I do consider it all slop.
I also recognize that isn’t how the world works unfortunately.
Nominally, to avoid discrimination
What would you qualify as discrimination?
Treating a category of content as inherently suspect based on how it was made, rather than whether it’s any good. Having one tag [AI] puts a giant target on the post.
Thing is, the tag isn’t neutral metadata, it’s a flag.
And if 97% of projects have touched AI tooling in some form (who knows how deeply), you’re not tagging outliers anymore, you’re tagging the norm and implying everything untagged is the clean option.
That’s not curation, that’s a vibe-based blacklist.
I’m for “trust, but verify” - tagged or not. And the tagging won’t work because 1) what is AI coded any more 2) do you need the tag to spot slop (which is what I think people mean by [AI])
Thing is, the tag isn’t neutral metadata, it’s a flag.
Correct, that is the reason people would support an AI tag…
Because for the vast majority of people, they don’t want AI anything
But…
1000% not discrimination
“vast majority don’t want AI anything” is doing a lot of work there. Do they not want AI autocomplete in the IDE? AI-assisted translation? AI-generated test cases? Because if the line is “any AI involvement,” the tag eats almost everything. If it’s something narrower, we’re back to: define the threshold.
This is a question about trust. That’s a hard problem because it assumes X is innocent, Y is guilty. I’m saying X and Y are both equally guilty (or innocent) until proven otherwise and Z (slop) can be summarily executed.
Do they not want AI autocomplete in the IDE? AI-assisted translation? AI-generated test cases?
These conversations always go like “What do you mean no one wants AI? What about [crap that no one wants]? Checkmate atheists”
Totally. Why should anyone care about whether their clothes were made by slaves or prisoners or children? Only the tightness of the stitching and fabric is a valid measure of clothing’s quality. 🙄
I’m sorry, what? Did you just equate AI use to actual child slavery?
I don’t even know how to begin to respond to that.
Your analogy is irrational and frankly disgusting. Blocked.
I’ll still respond for the sake of anyone else reading this. What I used was an analogy. I’m pointing out that you were dismissing the potential for moral objections to the use of AI. That is not the same as equating, but you probably know that.
You, like, other AI boosters are unable to fathom that folks’ moral objections are both truly held and legitimate so you feign ignorance and shut down any critique by simultaneously clutching pearls and claiming that the thing we find morally repugnant is “inevitable.” Happy to avoid future interactions. ❤
Might want to stop using the slop machines and look up these words: metaphor, analogy, example
Sure. And while I’m doing that, you might like to google Poe’s Law.
