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Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

theregister.com

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Re: Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

#3

Post by colesantiago »

lproven wrote: post #2

Posting this because I want people to vote -- and ideally vote for a total ban.

> and ideally vote for a total ban.

If a total ban were to happen, wouldn't that make Debian a target for hackers who can use LLMs to find vulnerabilities?

How would Debian keep up with the influx of AI assisted 0 days?

Re: Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

#4

Post by ivandenysov »

> Debian is a large and complicated project: the release announcement for version 13 says it has 69,830 packages, which take a total of 403 GB of disk, and contain 1,463,291,186 lines of code. So, suitably, it is a large and complex poll.

Surely these are not just Debian-owned packages. Whatever Debian decides won’t apply to packages not owned by Debian

Re: Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

#6

Post by roryirvine »

ivandenysov wrote: post #4

> Debian is a large and complicated project: the release announcement for version 13 says it has 69,830 packages, which take a total of 403 GB of disk, and contain 1,463,291,186 lines of code. So, suitably, it is a large and complex poll. Surely these are not just Debian-owned packages. Whatever Debian decides won’t apply to packages not owned by Debian

Debian is huge - that's why so many other distros use it as a base!

So, yes, all those packages are maintained either by an individual Debian Developer or a team of them.

There are third party repos, but they're (currently) neither as widespread nor as commonly-used as those for other major distros. This vote won't affect them, and you might potentially expect to see their use grow if one of the harsher options in this GR were to pass.

Re: Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

#7

Post by sscaryterry »

colesantiago wrote: post #3
lproven wrote: post #2

Posting this because I want people to vote -- and ideally vote for a total ban.

> and ideally vote for a total ban. If a total ban were to happen, wouldn't that make Debian a target for hackers who can use LLMs to find vulnerabilities? How would Debian keep up with the influx of AI assisted 0 days?

Exactly, agreed 100% https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/in_the_land_of_the_blind,_the...

Re: Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

#9

Post by ctenb »

colesantiago wrote: post #3
lproven wrote: post #2

Posting this because I want people to vote -- and ideally vote for a total ban.

> and ideally vote for a total ban. If a total ban were to happen, wouldn't that make Debian a target for hackers who can use LLMs to find vulnerabilities? How would Debian keep up with the influx of AI assisted 0 days?

Not using AI to write production code doesn't mean you can't use AI proactively to find vulnerabilities.

Re: Debian polls its developers on AI: permit or ban?

#10

Post by datakan »

ctenb wrote: post #9
colesantiago wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and ideally vote for a total ban. If a total ban were to happen, wouldn't that make Debian a target for hackers who can use LLMs to find vulnerabilities? How would Debian keep up with the influx of AI assisted 0 days?

Not using AI to write production code doesn't mean you can't use AI proactively to find vulnerabilities.

Poster wants a "total ban", you can only deduce that means vulnerability management also.
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