Monday, August 31st, 2026, 5:58 am
Richard Stallman: LLMs Lack Intelligence, Do Injustice
Filed under: 
reat interview with Richard Stallman published yesterday.
Stallman on LLMs: “The reason LLMs so often generate text whose meaning refers to false supposed facts is that they never really understand the text; they don’t work with meanings or facts in the domain of discussion. The terms they merit are “pretend intelligence” and “bullshit generators.”
“To avoid being lured into supporting the marketing hype based on “AI,” please join me in reserving the word “intelligence” for systems that qualify for it.
“I surely didn’t say anything about whether LLMs are “open,” because, as I’ve explained, I do not advocate making software “open” or “open source.” Those terms are depoliticized substitutes for “free” and “libre,” and were coined to win the support of businesses by avoiding the issues of freedom and justice (for the users of software) that might lead to criticizing businesses on moral grounds. Since those are the crucial issues in my view, the question I always ask about a program is whether it is free or libre.
“The LLMs that people mostly hear about are not released as free software. In fact, mostly they are not released at all: copies are not available. They can be used only as “online services” — meaning that the program a user directs a question to is running on some company’s computer, and under the developer’s total control. Even to modify it by patching the binary is impossible.
“Entrusting your own computing activity to software running on someone else’s server inherently subjugates you, because you can’t possibly modify that copy — even if it is a copy of a free program. We call that scenario SaaSS, for “Service as a Software Substitute” and we reject it.
“Since January I’ve heard of one LLM which seems to be released with freedom, including the training inputs. If that checks out, we would describe it as “free.”
“Alas, that doesn’t make it “intelligence.””
