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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"

#481

Post by customguy »

a1o wrote: post #284
Loughla wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

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…

It doesn't help with the additional work/chores, at least initially, but someone on HN had a really good idea IMO, just take the code, and close the PR.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49474708

I saw the argument that if OS maintainers "really care" about their projects, they would accept valid contributions regardless origin. Well, turn it around: if you really care so much about contributing, if you really just wanna HeLP, you don't need the credit. The warm fuzzy feeling that your contribution ended up being used should be enough.

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

#483

Post by vlyan »

zaneyard wrote: post #412
vlyan wrote: post #314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

code didn't matter even before LLMs. we only ever cared about the product of it. the current pace of LLM advancement only has to keep for five more years for handmade code to be considered a liability. I wouldn't worry about being able to recall obscure APIs or whiteboard leetcode. I'm far more worried about having to change careers at 40.

I've seen the result of "code doesn't matter" and it's difficult to change and maintain. I guess if your business is ok with frequent P1 incidents or ships a complete product and never touches it again, but I've never been part of one. I've also never been in a position that cared about leetcode or remembering APIs, so it's possible my experience is completely different from yours.

ah, but if there are incidents then the product is faulty. by "code doesn't matter" I mean exactly that we don't care what's under the hood as long as it runs. code with "good enough" quality delivered in a week is most often preferable to premium quality code delivered in a month, and even "it's ugly, slow, and there are edge cases when it breaks"-quality code hacked together during the lunch break is often sufficient for the product to function.

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

#484

Post by rcxdude »

antirez wrote: post #165
frabcus wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His reasoning is quite fresh and interesting: > What LLMs in Debian development will do, I fear, is eliminate any incentive to scrap boilerplate or reform policies that require a lot of other senseless human effort. If I had had access to LLMs 30 years ago, I might have just had them generate the rules files, replate with complexity. So they will make Debian even more firmly what it is, and ever less likely to explor…

That's perfectly wrong. Since strong coding AI, people venture into huge rewrites and other big changes that automatically make sense but otherwise would not.

I would say it's a mixed bag. On the one hand, yes, you can experiment with big changes much more easily, but on the other hand, you can have cruft build up in a big way if you're not actively looking for it and trying to cut it back.

In Debian, often the barrier to change is one or two people actively disagreeing with a change who are in a position to block it through their own action or inaction, so just being able to do more work on the change yourself is not necessarily going to make it easier to change things.

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

#485

Post by rcxdude »

TZubiri wrote: post #333

What are the main workloads of Debian? It's worth noting that Debian has no code production, so the LLM debate applies differently than an open source project. I'd assume the main workload is testing, reviewing code for maliciousness or inefficiencies, adding packages, responding to issues (90% being passing the issue downstream), perhaps setting configurations, and providing some documentation. I don't quite see LLM…

Packages are code, in large part, and they probably represent the main value and work product of a distribution (though a lot of automation already exists for this). I would not be surprised if an LLM could manage most of the day-to-day effort of creating and maintaining a standard debian package. The other main part that is valuable, though, is the process of getting all those packages to play nicely with each other, which is a bit more political and probably will not benefit so much from LLMs, other than perhaps making some approaches or experiments lower effort.

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

#486

Post by newswasboring »

Barrin92 wrote: post #459
newswasboring wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not arguing that things don't change and certain skills dont atrophy. I am arguing that the atrophied skills are compensated by new skills we develop. But your personal attack makes me feel like your purpose is to win, not to be right.

>I am arguing that the atrophied skills are compensated by new skills we develop is there a lot of evidence for this? You can broadly put technology into two camps. Technologically that, as it becomes more powerful, demands more attention and skill from the user and just the opposite. A bow is more powerful than a stick but also more demanding to use. A car is more powerful than your feet but your population ends up…

You are equating governance failures with technological ones. At one hand you are asking me to prove how technology like writing or cars are useful but on the other hand you are bemoaning people's declining reading abilities. What even is your point?

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

#487

Post by qarl2 »

arjie wrote: post #472
qarl2 wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look to see who profits.

That does indeed make it seem like Executive Directors of environmental NGOs are responsible for this.

Sure - if you believe the Executive Directors of environmental NGOs are actually that powerful - and not just doing the bidding of someone above them.

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

#488

Post by throwaway2037 »

internet2000 wrote: post #75
dguest wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are there examples of anyone discussing this and reaching other conclusions? We've come to the same conclusion in our organization and while it felt like it needed to be discussed and stated, I've never heard of anyone coming to a different conclusion. [EDIT: I was referring specifically to the idea that you have to stand by the code that you write. Is anyone deciding on a policy that says "the AI did it" is a valid…

> Are there examples of anyone discussing this and reaching other conclusions? Yes. Very notably: https://ziglang.org/code-of-conduct/

    > No LLMs for finding bugs.
This is so dumb. How can they know if someone used an LLMs to find bug or debug a bug? In short: They cannot. LLMs are an excellent tool for debugging error messages.

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

#490

Post by Loughla »

sarchertech wrote: post #354
Loughla wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

Well historically the consensus was that it was harder to read code than to write it, but that leads to uncomfortable conclusions these days, so that bit of common wisdom has mostly been ejected. > I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts? I’m not trying to be mean, but this comment is basically “I have no experience with this topic, but it can just be boiled down to this one simple question right?”

I don't think that's being mean at all, and it's valid.

Yes that's literally why I asked it. Simple questions, here, regularly elicit long form explanations. I was interested in this topic and have no experience. So I thought I'd try a broad overview type question to see if I could learn something today.

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