Monthly Archives: September 2026

Generative AI – The new pandemic

03 Thursday Sep 2026

Posted by in GNU Health, Public Health

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“Generative Artificial Intelligence” is the new pandemic, and it has already infected the Free Software community. The term is actually a misnomer, because it is not intelligent (please see https://gnu.org/philosophy/words-to-avoid.html#ArtificialIntelligence)

The Linux kernel and other projects in the Free Software community have opened the gates to Big tech slopware, and it is ugly. Many people don’t really know how pernicious and damaging this new technology is for the environment and for our society.

Last month I had the privilege to talk at the faculty of social sciences of the University of Buenos Aires and the University of Entre Ríos in Argentina. In both conferences I had the opportunity to talk about how new technologies, lead by big corporations pose a huge risk to Mother Nature, to the underprivileged and marginalized communities and to society. On the positive side, presented alternatives to protect the digital sovereignty, sustainability and dignity of the people against this greedy, short sighted corporations that have created a global public health issue.

Fortunately, not everyone is falling into this “GenAI” trap. A large part of the Free Software community is not happy with LLMs and many have taken a public stance against it. Very important communities from software development platform like Codeberg, the Zig programming language, the NetBSD operating system, emulators like QEMU and GNU/Linux distributions such as Gentoo, Alpine or Parabola have rejected to be complicit of this nasty “AI bubble”.

There are some resources that actively update the projects that opposed LLM / generative AI, to name a few:

Search engines like DuckDuckGo already have a “noAI” page (see https://noai.duckduckgo.com). When you enter this site, all AI-assisted answers, AI-generated images and AI feature suggestions are turned off.

The noAI page from DuckDuckGo search engine

Of course, the project I lead, The GNU Health and Hospital information System (GNU Health) has included the strict no AI policy in both the Code of Conduct and in the contributing chapters. We want to make sure every single line of code is made by humans that understand what they are doing.

GNU Health Strict No Generative Artificial Intelligence Policy

GNU Health is social project made by humans and for humans. We DO NOT accept any code, artwork, review, documentation or issues created by generative Artifical Intelligence (GenAI) / Large Language Models (LLMs).

The GNU Health no-AI policy is because we strongly believe that:

  • GenAI is bad for Mother Nature
  • GenAI is bad for human rights, especially for underserved and marginalized communities.
  • GenAI is bad for the Free Software and Free Culture communities.
  • GenAI is bad for you

Last but not least, GNU Health manages critical health information both at personal and population level. There must be a reasoning behind every single line of code. We make all the effort to minimize bugs that can jeopardize the integrity and security of the system, and we can not risk the project by putting it in hands of stochastic parrots.

Let’s keep the art and science of computing a human virtue.

Large corporations are creating a new crisis in the Free Software community and in our society. It is also a global public health issue. This evil technology is generating a global ecocide, but also puts at risk your freedom, human rights and the development of our societies. But there is hope, and you just need to join us in the fight against this LLM atrocity. We are many, and we have the tools for ethical use of computing resources. Look an adopt the projects in the areas that you use, and if you can, please support them.

I finish the post with the closing sentence in the GNU Health no GenAI policy…

Let’s keep the art and science of computing a human virtue.

Happy Hacking.