I certainly hope they'll choose C.
LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
11–20 of 228 posts
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#12[flagged]
The fact that some react to these like they were taken away some possession is genuinely interesting
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#13> A LLM (...) merely produces syntactically likely combinations of the training data
While doesn't matter much in the rest of the policy, this is a common misconception among AI skeptics. It is not the case for a long time (since RL is used heavily in the training) and a LLM may go beyond its training data.
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#14Curious what the "use" or "assistance" of LLM models means. I mostly use Gemini as a front-end to search Google without getting ads or SEO garbage, would that be forbidden?
Even if they wanted to forbid that, how would they even detect it?
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#15Curious what the "use" or "assistance" of LLM models means. I mostly use Gemini as a front-end to search Google without getting ads or SEO garbage, would that be forbidden?
Even if they wanted to forbid that, how would they even detect it?
Asking for good-faith compliance, and failing that, simply waiting for slop enthusiasts to publicly brag about using LLMs to break the rules. All evidence suggests that it is impossible for slop enthusiasts to resist outing themselves for any significant span of time.
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#16Proposal A is the end of debian for non-english speakers. For those who don't speak english which is most of the world, using an LLM has become vital, because technical information is not available in their language or is extremely basic. Arch Linux is far more lenient with this.
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#17> A LLM (...) merely produces syntactically likely combinations of the training data While doesn't matter much in the rest of the policy, this is a common misconception among AI skeptics. It is not the case for a long time (since RL is used heavily in the training) and a LLM may go beyond its training data.
I think the questionable term is not “syntactically likely” but “merely”. Syntactical likeness is a vast solution space that encompasses the work of a terrible developer and a genius developer. In fact this solution space is a gap wide enough to encompass all coding knowledge and expertise.
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#18Don't misinterpret this link as representing a final decision. It's actually three separate proposals which will be debated and then voted on.
Proposal A is "expressly forbid any contributions to Debian written with the use or assistance of large language models (LLMs) or other generative AI tools."
Proposal B is "The Debian project allows AI-assisted contributions (partially or fully generated by an LLM), provided the following conditions are met [...]"
Proposal C is "request that all contributors to Debian avoid the use of LLMs in their Debian work" without an outright ban.
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#19I suspect the debate shouldn't be LLMs or no LLMs, but rather what level of human accountability is required.
We've accepted compilers, static analyzers, and code generators because the maintainer is still responsible for the final result. The interesting question is whether LLMs fundamentally change that responsibility, or just change the kinds of mistakes reviewers need to look for
Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals
#20This set of proposals, are (sorry) just stupid. It's like saying to someone, you are not allowed to saw wood using an electric saw, you must do it by hand. What are we doing here?! LLM(s) are just a tool. Use it as such. You should own the work anyway.