Proposed draft of an AI policy

Per my action, QT4CG-0165-01, here’s an attempt at an AI policy:

Contributions must not include content generated by large language models (LLMs) or other probabilistic tools (including tools which are often colloquially categorized as "AI").

This policy applies to the specifications, tests, issues, comments, pull requests, and any other contributions to QT4CG.

Although we acknowledge the many widely discussed ethical issues with LLMs, we will not refer to those issues as a primary justification for this policy. Instead, the specific justifications for the policy are practical.

For most members of the community group, our efforts are focused on document review. Reviewing technical specifications requires comparing what the specification says with an understanding of what was proposed by the group and determining if they are aligned. This is a time-consuming process.

LLMs are exceptionally good at producing large volumes of very /plausible/ text, but that plausibility is a statistical parlour trick: the LLM does not understand and cannot evaluate the output against any objective criteria.

Any process that increases the volume of material that has to be reviewed must be held to the highest standard of intellectual contribution.

A secondary practical concern is that LLMs have been trained on an enormous corpus of material, sometimes obtained in violation of copyright and other laws. Their output often includes verbatim samples of the training data. Incorporating such prose into the specifications may unknowingly violate licenses of copyrighted works.

For these practical reasons, QT4CG does not accept content that has been generated or substantially constructed using LLMs, "AI", or any similar probabilistic tools.

If you are uncertain whether the tool you wish to use, or the way in which you wish to use it, is covered by this policy, you are very welcome to discuss it with the CG's Chair.

                                        Be seeing you,
                                          norm

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Norm Tovey-Walsh
CEO, Saxonica

Received on Monday, 25 May 2026 11:51:31 UTC