GenAI DDoS attacks?
Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) or distributed denial of service (DDoS)?
The Free Software Foundation recently released a blog post outlining how their infrastructure struggles with traffic from web crawlers run by LLM vendors:
“Our infrastructure has been under attack since August 2024. Large Language Model (LLM) web crawlers have been a significant source of the attacks […].”
I heard that the Schloss Dagstuhl team is facing similar issues for dblp.
I would assume that this is not only web crawlers, but also GenAI tools searching the web as part of retrieval-augmented generation or when doing “deep research.”
It’s time to honestly and holistically talk about the cost-benefit ratio of these tools. Besides the many benefits of using GenAI tools, a holistic discussion needs to factor in energy consumption, copyright/licensing issues, but also downstream effects on non-profit organizations such as the FSF or Schloss Dagstuhl.