[OSGeo-Discuss] Using AI in OSGeo projects - Notes from the Timisoara BoF

[Adam Steer]

Hi all

The community seems really quiet on this topic, here and on discourse -
aside from some key voices! While these are important and not to ignore,
OSGeo is more than just a few euro-aligned guys (myself included). My first
response about the arguments of Linus is this: is OSGeo really the
community that wants to take the attitude "well, you can always fork it"?
What's the relevance of this to OSGeo and its approach?

Or, is it a dead cat? (see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_cat_strategy)

I've written in another discussion about community, environmental and
social harms already caused by large scale expansion of the tools we
collectively (and wrongly**) call "ai". And thought that this research
might be good to add to the discussion:

https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5y6m4_v1

The TL:DR is the title: "AI advice suppresses people’s willingness to say
“I don’t know”, even when the advice is wrong and accuracy is incentivized"

What has this to do with OSGeo? And writing code?

Well, is OSGeo only writing code? Or is it also about all the support
systems that enable writing code? Or *do things* with the code? Or *fund*
the code? Or develop (and evolve) systems of governance for funding,
writing, sharing, and using code? I've always had the view that OSGeo is
all of the above. And in all of that system, being able to update our
thinking, our approach - is critical. And we need to be comfortable with "I
don't know".

All of those words sum up to:

I'm very uncomfortable with the approach "well, you can always fork it".
I'm also uncomfortable with the particular fallacy of technological
inevitability about "ai".

So where do I think OSGeo projects should go with that?

Where they choose to, understanding the risks carried - from plain wrong
code to excessive maintainer workload to losing valuable community to valid
criticism on environmental, social and psychological grounds. Or being told
they're being left behind (by what?)

I think Even makes a good point: are we here to do a technology at all
costs? Or here to do a community that cares about how technology is made
and deoplyed? or something else?

Maybe all of this doesn't even resonate in a technology focused
organisation. I really wanted to write on behalf of a  (maybe imaginary)
part of the community who sees OSGeo in a much broader context.

Cheers,

Adam


**I do own a degree in psychology for what that is worth, I feel there's a
little imprimatur there on making this kind of call
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