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Gentoo AI Policy

wiki.gentoo.org

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Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#61

Post by sothatsit »

malfist wrote: post #29
tptacek wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interestingly --- while I doubt it would make a difference to the decision Gentoo in particular would make --- the cost/benefit of LLMs for coding changed sharply just a month or two after this, when the first iteration of foundation models tuned for effective agents came out. People forget that effective coding agents are just a couple minutes old; the first research preview release of Claude Code was this past Febr…

> the cost/benefit of LLMs for coding changed sharply just a month or two after this People say this every month.

Marketing people say this every month, but that doesn't mean there haven't also been actual step-changes in AI-assisted coding in the last year.

The policy is dated to 2024-04-14. After they approved this, there were all of these releases that were all pretty dramatic advancements for coding: 3.5 Sonnet (for taste + agentic coding), o1-preview (for reasoning), Claude Code (for developer experience), o3 (for debugging), Claude 4 Opus (for reliability), and now GPT-5 Pro (for code review).

We have advanced from AI that can unreliably help you look up documentation for tools like matplotlib, to AI tools that can write and review large complex programs in the last year alone. Sure, these tools still have a lot of deficiencies. But that doesn't negate the fact that the change in AI for coding in the last year has been dramatic.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#62

Post by twelvechairs »

simianwords wrote: post #57
themafia wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI being trained on copyrighted data is considered fair use because it transforms the underlying data rather than distribute it as is. It's not a binary. Sometimes it fully reproduces works in violation of copyright and other times it modifies it just enough to avoid claims against it's output. Using AI and just _assuming_ it would never lead you to a copyright violation is foolish. > uses same energy as more than…

>That does not matter. What matters is if the outcome is improved in the way they predict. This is actually measurable. Ok lets discuss facts. >It's not a binary. Sometimes it fully reproduces works in violation of copyright and other times it modifies it just enough to avoid claims against it's output. Using AI and just _assuming_ it would never lead you to a copyright violation is foolish. In the Anthropic case the…

On copyright its worth noting that Gentoo has a substantial user base outside the USA (maybe primarily - see [0]) for whom the anthropic judgment you mention probably doesn't mean much

[0] https://trends.builtwith.com/Server/Gentoo-Linux

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#63

Post by [deleted] »

jjmarr wrote: post #47
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Perhaps the most telling portion of their decision is: Quality concerns. Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly looking, but meaningless content. They are capable of providing good assistance if you are careful enough, but we can't really rely on that. At this point, they pose both the risk of lowering the quality of Gentoo projects, and of requiring an unfair human effort from developers and users to…

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

[deleted]

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#64

Post by thaumasiotes »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #51
perching_aix wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this meant in response to what I wrote or did you mean to post this elsewhere in the thread? If the former, I'm not sure what am I supposed to do with this.

> Was this meant in response to what I wrote or did you mean to post this elsewhere in the thread? If the former, I'm not sure what am I supposed to do with this. You wrote: You may notice that opinions are like assholes: everyone has theirs. They're literally just "thoughts and feelings". They may masquerade as arguments from time to time, much to my dismay, but rest assured: there's nothing to "refute", debate, or…

> I provided analysis supporting my position that the project maintainers most likely did not make this policy based on "literally just 'thoughts and feelings'" and, instead, made an informed policy based on experience and rational discourse.

That position would look better if they hadn't relied so heavily on feelings to justify the announcement:

>> Their operations are causing concerns about the huge use of energy and water.

>> The advertising and use of AI models has caused a significant harm to employees [which ones?] and reduction of service quality.

>> LLMs have been empowering all kinds of spam and scam efforts.

There is no experience or rational discourse involved there.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#66

Post by totallymike »

jjmarr wrote: post #47
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Perhaps the most telling portion of their decision is: Quality concerns. Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly looking, but meaningless content. They are capable of providing good assistance if you are careful enough, but we can't really rely on that. At this point, they pose both the risk of lowering the quality of Gentoo projects, and of requiring an unfair human effort from developers and users to…

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

[flagged]

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#67

Post by perching_aix »

AdieuToLogic wrote: post #51
perching_aix wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was this meant in response to what I wrote or did you mean to post this elsewhere in the thread? If the former, I'm not sure what am I supposed to do with this.

> Was this meant in response to what I wrote or did you mean to post this elsewhere in the thread? If the former, I'm not sure what am I supposed to do with this. You wrote: You may notice that opinions are like assholes: everyone has theirs. They're literally just "thoughts and feelings". They may masquerade as arguments from time to time, much to my dismay, but rest assured: there's nothing to "refute", debate, or…

An informed opinion is still an opinion. Voting itself is an expression of opinion, which they participated in - if it merely followed logically, it wouldn't have needed to be voted upon. Mind you, the "experience and rational discourse" is not presented, not in the policy, not in the excerpts and link you just provided.

In order to "refute" their entire position, if we accept that to even make sense (I do not), I'd need to either prove them wrong about what their opinions are (nonsense), or show evidence they were actually holding a different opinion that ran contrary to what they shared (impossible, their actual opinion is known only to them, if that). There's very little "logical payload" to their published policy, if any. It's a series of opinions, and then a conclusion. Hence my example with the person not liking a given TV show, but stating their distaste as a fact of the world.

> I doubt it, but if you have evidence refuting possibility #3, please share so we may all learn.

Why am I being rhetorically coerced into engaging with something from a false set of options of your imagination, exactly?

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#68

Post by jlebar »

jjmarr wrote: post #47
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Perhaps the most telling portion of their decision is: Quality concerns. Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly looking, but meaningless content. They are capable of providing good assistance if you are careful enough, but we can't really rely on that. At this point, they pose both the risk of lowering the quality of Gentoo projects, and of requiring an unfair human effort from developers and users to…

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

As a former LLVM developer and reviewer, I want to say:

1. Good for you.

2. Ignore the haters in the comments.

> my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check.

That is so awesome.

> The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR.

The LLVM reviewers are big kids. They know how to ignore a PR if they don't want to review it. Don't feel bad about wasting people's time. They'll let you know.

You might be surprised how many PRs even pre-LLMs had 100+ comments. There's a lot to learn. You clearly want to learn, so you'll get there and will soon be offering a net-positive contribution to this community (or the next one you join), if you aren't already.

Best of luck on your journey.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#69

Post by simianwords »

twelvechairs wrote: post #62
simianwords wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That does not matter. What matters is if the outcome is improved in the way they predict. This is actually measurable. Ok lets discuss facts. >It's not a binary. Sometimes it fully reproduces works in violation of copyright and other times it modifies it just enough to avoid claims against it's output. Using AI and just _assuming_ it would never lead you to a copyright violation is foolish. In the Anthropic case the…

On copyright its worth noting that Gentoo has a substantial user base outside the USA (maybe primarily - see [0]) for whom the anthropic judgment you mention probably doesn't mean much [0] https://trends.builtwith.com/Server/Gentoo-Linux

Fair point but I would think EU would be all up on this. This is right up their alley and clearly an easy way to justify more regulations and slow down AI. Why hasn’t anything come out of it?

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#70

Post by bestham »

jjmarr wrote: post #47
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Perhaps the most telling portion of their decision is: Quality concerns. Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly looking, but meaningless content. They are capable of providing good assistance if you are careful enough, but we can't really rely on that. At this point, they pose both the risk of lowering the quality of Gentoo projects, and of requiring an unfair human effort from developers and users to…

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

IMO that is not your call to make, it is the reviews call to make. It is the reviewers resources you are spending to learn more quickly. You are consuming a “free” resource for personal gain because you feel that it is justified in your particular case. It would likely not scale and grind many projects to a halt at least temporarily if this was done at scale.
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