I was contributing to a thread on the question of the SN/SA collection potentially representing the earliest collection within the four principle prose collections of DN/DA MN/MA SN/SA and AN/EA here;
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/t/the-samyutta-nikaya-as-the-earliest-of-the-ebts/
As many here know @thomaslaw has tirelessly promoted the work of Choong Mun Keat and the Chinese scholar monk Yin Shun and repeatedly made claims that Yin Shun has shown that SN/SA is, indeed , the earliest of the 4 agamas.
My experience of reading Choong was that he always, even in his most detailed expositions of the matter, more of less relied on Yin Shun, giving very little specific information about the arguments for the thesis other than that the yogacarabhumishastra was important to Yin Shuns thought on the matter.
Feeling frustrated at this, and @thomaslaw informing me (wonderfully!) that Yin Shuns formations (his major work on this issue) was in fact readily accessible on CBETA, I decided to bite the bullet and go to the source, attempting, with the help of chinese english dictionaries, google translate, and yes, chatgpt, which I even went so far as subscribing to at personal expense, to actually read the work that Thomas, CHoong, @sujato, Bucknell and others repeatedly refer to as important in their valuation of the place of SN/SA in the context of the 4 agamas.
As you can imagine for someone with no talent for languages and grammer, this has been a pretty painful and greulling process, (especially since I didnāt realize CBETA can generate PDFās and i was scrolling back to my place every time the browser refreshed!) but I feel like I am starting to get some sense of this important work.
Hoping to actually engage Thomas in some actual discussion of the merits or otherwise of the arguments Yin Shun presents I began to address this in the thread.
This morning I woke early and had an hour before work so I got straight to it, rather than browsing the forum first.
Unbeknownst to me, a few hours before, an announcement had been made, informing the board that the FAQ had been updated to alter:
Q39. Can I add/create a thread or post which contains AI (Artificial Intelligence) content from popular sources such as ChatGPT?
A: AI generated content is not encouraged. However, due to the popularity of free-to-use AI systems such as ChatGPT, we acknowledge that it is inevitable that there will be posts that draw from such sources, so please be aware that:Verbatim AI generated textual content is strongly discouraged. It should not make up the majority of the post or reply.
If AI-generated content (textual or other) is posted for discussion, its source must always be acknowledged.
Suspected unacknowledged AI text should be flagged, so that it can be considered by the moderators.
Any AI-generated content from any source may be considered inappropriate for reasons of quality, accuracy, triviality, or otherwise detracting from the quality of forum discussions.
AI-generated translations of EBT (Early Buddhist Text) material are acceptable if sourced and of sufficient quality, or welcomed by expert human translators. Whole-text AI translations must be hosted outside the forum.
to;
Q39. Can I add/create a thread or post which contains AI (Artificial Intelligence) content?
A: The short answer is āNO.ā You may only use AI for accessibility purposes, in which case please say so, eg āI am writing this using AI text-to-speech ā¦ā
Translations of sacred texts(a) made using AI or machine translation are forbidden. If you cannot translate a text, post it in our translation category in the original language, and ask for expert human help.
Any other AI generated content is strongly discouraged. Any Dhamma questions you may ask a LLM can generally be answered by humans on our forum, who have lived experience, knowledge and wisdom.
If you decide that you must post AI-generated text for discussion, it should be a maximum of a few sentences, and its source must always be stated.
If you use a translation engine such as Google, please post in your native language and in English and name the engine you used.
Please help the moderators by flagging unacknowledged content which you think is AI-generated, so that they can advise the author appropriately.
All proposals and discussion regarding the use of AI and its ethics must be confined to the Watercooler category.
Links to sites with predominantly AI generated content will only be tolerated within the Watercooler.
Subsequently arriving at work I have found my post to thomas flagged, and a letter form a moderator stating that my post included more than one or two sentences and was therefore in violation of the rule.
I was confused, not having seen the forum update from the early hours of this morning informing us of the change, so I went to the FAQ, finding it edited, I then found the pinned post.
I will qoute with names redacted here the reply I sent to the moderator:
I was told that I could post my concerns here at the watercooler. So here I am.
I just want to reiterate to everyone here how disappointed I am about all this. My machine translations where given with full acknowledgement, alongside the chinese originals, with clear caveats to the effect that the machine translations where unreliable. They where quotations of relevant paragraphs, from a 500 plus page book, and in no way attempted to give a ācompleteā translation of the work. They where not machine translations of a sacred text, they where machine translations of a 20th century scholar of Buddhism working in a foreign language.
The rules as they have been made now more or less ban the conversation I wanted to have with @thomaslaw and more or less ban any public discussion between scholars working in different languages except to an audience that happens to share both those languages on the forum or are so desperate to know that they make the laborious effort of cutting and pasting all the relevant outs in the language they are unfamiliar with into chatgpt, and then conduct any input into the thread they wish to have in such a way as not to fall afoul of using their native language for more than a āfew sentencesā of anything in the foreign language they wish to appeal to.
I just want to protest, in the strongest possible terms, against this new, authoritarian and restrictive rule.
I understand if the rule applies to ancient sacred texts, after all, the forum is devoted to people who want to spend their lives with these texts many of whom are translators first and foremost. But to make the discussion of scholarship about these texts, emanating in languages other than english, less accessible to the participants of this forum is a manifestly backwards, regressive and problematic step.
I hope at some point the committee can meet again and work towards a more balanced policy that recognizes the use cases of these tools that do not impact the scholarly translations of the ancient texts, and make this board a more open, accessible and scholarly place for everyone.
Metta.
PS If anyone has any concerns with what I have said or how I have said it perhaps they could PM me details before flagging the post?
