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Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

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Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#461

Post by Dylan16807 »

inigyou wrote: post #435
Dylan16807 wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly as close except when it isn't?

Yes, and when it isn't is a very specific very limited case that has no relation to the one being discussed. The fact that some course of action was previously mentioned in a reasoning trace, or any other context, makes it more likely to be performed. It has nothing to do with the reason that it was mentioned in the reasoning trace.

I don't think it's that limited of a case.

And it's not "no relation", it was brought up as an attempt to fix/subset the original claim.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#462

Post by overfeed »

NuclearPM wrote: post #316
overfeed wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ngl this is just gatekeeping As a beneficiary of Debian, this is good, you are praising Debian with feint damnation. I wish Debian had done more gatekeeping in the past on specific components.

Did you intentionally write that like an AI as a joke?

I'd be impressed by an AI that can go against tons of training data by reversing the polarity of a common turn-of-phrase.

I was proud of that, and am slightly bummed to hear someone thinks it sounds AI-like. Also, I had a typo, its supposed to be "faint" (light) not "feint" (fake-out), though the latter worked out in context, and works by adding a homonym layer to the turn of phrase already turned on its head. 2 layers of smug, conceited cleverness - or 1 layer and a typo if you're not feeling charitable - that gets in the way of clear communication seems very human to me, YMMV.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#463

Post by m4rtink »

newswasboring wrote: post #362
a1o wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. The original authors have no idea what their agents are writing, these are mostly badly quality models (people doing this are not only cutting corners, but also using the less amount of money/tokens to do so). If the agent creates 200, 400 or whate…

> Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. I've heard this in a lot of places, don't have a way to verify this in action. Do you have any citation or just gut feel (still valid but less useful for me).

There was this attempt (attack?) on Fedora in June: https://lwn.net/Articles/1077035/

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#464

Post by m4rtink »

NuclearPM wrote: post #239
hliyan wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good thing about the "you're the author regardless of the tool you used to produce the code" policy is that if a developer repeatedly submits poor quality AI generated code, one does not blame the model or the agent, one bans/terminates the developer.

Terminates???

Nuke it from orbit.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#465

Post by rstuart4133 »

kccqzy wrote: post #62
jhack wrote: post #14

Good to see the most common sense option winning. Some of the other proposals were so disconnected from reality I'm surprised they were even considered.

This indicates you might be in a bubble. I interact with people with a very wide range of opinions on AI and I’m not surprised by any of the proposals here.

> This indicates you might be in a bubble.

He didn't say he was surprised by the options offered. He said he was reassured by what he considered to be the common sense option winning. As was I.

It didn't just win. Debian uses Condorcet voting, which does the equivalent of running lots of mini elections - pairing the options against each of the others in one on one contests. Close contests need a tie breaker mechanism as you get A beats B, B beats C, C beats A. Not this time - the winning option defeated all others in its one on ones.

I found that surprising. There are a few options close to option 5, the winner - only slightly less liberal. Effectively the most extreme option won, and not by a slim margin.

I, and I suspect the OP, wasn't surprised at the range of options offered. This is par for the course - Debian is a very robust democracy with its fair share of opinionated individuals. There has been a lot of noise about the LLM's. The surprising thing is what I regard as the common sense one was at one extreme, and that "extreme" position won easily.

I guess it's yet another illustration of the level of on online noise being a lousy indicator of what the normies are thinking. Yes, that's obvious, but when the level of noise is high it still can catch you by surprise.

Edit: The two most restrictive options were ranked below "None of the Above". That's the strongest rebuke a Debian GR can deliver to a proposal. Under Debians rules, if an option loses to "None of the Above" it can't win regardless of the outcome of the other mini elections. I don't think Debian could make it's position much plainer: LLM's are just another tool a developer can use at his discretion, and are to be treated no differently to any other tool.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#466

Post by veeti »

daishi55 wrote: post #341
kccqzy wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This indicates you might be in a bubble. I interact with people with a very wide range of opinions on AI and I’m not surprised by any of the proposals here.

There was one proposal that focused on environmental issues with AI. This is indeed pretty disconnected from reality when you consider that Debian doesn’t have any policy requiring you to be vegan in order to contribute

You mean the most effective way to enact social and political change is not to stand next to someone at the urinal and tell them you are a vegan?

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#467

Post by veeti »

TheNastyPatty wrote: post #382
daishi55 wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was one proposal that focused on environmental issues with AI. This is indeed pretty disconnected from reality when you consider that Debian doesn’t have any policy requiring you to be vegan in order to contribute

What is “disconnected from reality” about environmental considerations regarding AI? Growing AI usage = growing data center power draw = higher emissions from any non-renewable sources contributing to that power, as well as increased freshwater consumption which is itself a considerably difficult resource to renew. That’s about as direct of a causal link between point A (power hungry AI being used for Debian developm…

Have you considered how many data centers used the Linux kernel before anybody knew what a Chat GPT is? Does the project get a free pass on such activities?

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#468

Post by Supermancho »

JohnHaugeland wrote: post #340
Supermancho wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not? I'm pretty sure a developer could spam large PRs before and regardless of AI involvement is allowed or not.

this article is about the flood of junior developers who are producing enormous prs they’ve never seen full of untrustworthy code that a human hasn’t evaluated arguing that it’s possible to make them by hand isn’t just missing the point; it’s missing the entire discussion

> arguing that it’s possible to make them by hand isn’t just missing the point; it’s missing the entire discussion

>> Before they were not able to spam large PRs

I was replying to someone insinuating that there was something I might have missed.

Interjecting about the topical article, is a derail of this thread for some reason that is personal to you. Good luck with whatever.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#469

Post by sarchertech »

sebmellen wrote: post #449
aleph_minus_one wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just had a thought, what if you made new contributors write a human-authored essay on why they’re submitting a patch, and then check it against Pangram? The problem is writing such an essay takes magnitudes more of an effort for people who are not native English (or whatever the language is in which discussions are done about the project) speakers. Also, relatedly, essays written by non-native English speakers ofte…

I’m as skeptical of the AI writing detection as anyone else, but I’ve been trying to beat Pangram v4 for the last week and it’s essentially impossible.

Have you tried in both directions though? You need to test both sensitivity and specificity.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#470

Post by sarchertech »

blackqueeriroh wrote: post #437
1718627440 wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a well-known trope, that it's harder to read code than to write it, and review is more complicated than to read it, so I do not understand what you want to imply?

Maybe it is for people who have written code all their lives, but as someone who started with reading code and has read far more code than I’ve ever written, reading code is WAY easier for me.

If you have little experience writing code, do you know that you actually understand what you’re reading though?

For example could you reproduce the code you read immediately after writing it?

It’s very easy to “read code” if you’re just reading for surface level understanding.

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