Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

lwn.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 482 posts

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

#121

Post by ravenstine »

rfgplk wrote: post #117
ad_fontes wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still your code I wholly agree with your comment, but is it legally "your code"? Copyright is implicit at the moment of human creation. But there isn't yet settled law on AI-assisted creation. So it might be a problem for projects to accept contributions where it's not clear who actually owns that work.

> Copyright Literally irrelevant and I have no idea why people even bring this up constantly. Copyright is practically unenforceable in the software world, when was the last time you saw someone (a company or an individual) actually sue _and win_? Apple wasn't capable of stopping all the other phone manufacturers from directly cloning their product (despite having patents & copyright) so how can an individual? The on…

Software is one of the most derivative types of works ever invented. It's arguably based on copying what other people have already created. The modern world would look a lot more primitive if this wasn't the case.

Corporations like Coca-Cola long ago figured out that begging people not to steal your ideas is a waste of time. If you don't want people using your ideas, then don't share them.

Dunno why so many programmers don't get this and seem perpetually butthurt that other programmers figured out the ultimate way for programmers to rip off each other's code.

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

#122

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

frabcus wrote: post #111
edward wrote: post #33

Joey Hess is unimpressed. See https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/Debian_and_the_sirens/

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…

Yes, because LLMs have no online learning, it's a mistake to innovative in programming languages and tooling. Use what exists instead, the power of having training data is often underestimated.

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

#123

Post by yoyohello13 »

sisyphus15 wrote: post #83
winrid wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're not dumb. They just don't care. They didn't before either. Now they just have an easy excuse.

Completely wrong generalization. I'm a person who is over-reliant on LLMs, doesn't know how most of the things in the codebase work, and is atrophying both in programming and in general cognition. I used to care, a lot. And I still do.

If you actually cared. You’d do something about it.

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

#125

Post by jimmaswell »

frabcus wrote: post #111
edward wrote: post #33

Joey Hess is unimpressed. See https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/Debian_and_the_sirens/

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…

I use LLM's to make massive structural changes I never would have done by hand all the time. It's intractably tedious for me but easy for an LLM.

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

#126

Post by Cantinflas »

frabcus wrote: post #111
edward wrote: post #33

Joey Hess is unimpressed. See https://joeyh.name/blog/entry/Debian_and_the_sirens/

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 a very narrow view. If anyone could vibe code their printer drivers, maybe free software wouldn't have existed, because it would not have been needed in the first place.

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

#127

Post by newsomix9xl »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #57
throwaway2037 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds regarding the Linux kernel is reasonably similar. He views AI/LLMs as just another tool in the development process. Think about life before and after modern IDEs that features IntelliSense circa 2000. It was night and day. It did not make programmers dumber -- it was a new tool.

Except LLMs actually are making programmers dumber. I personally know people, people whom I know for a fact were good programmers before, who have now completely stopped using their brains. When you ask them why they did something in the code, they say "I don't know, Claude did that and I didn't really question it". There was no such analogous phenomenon with IDEs.

The LLM did not require them to ignore their code. That's a choice they made.

They made choices that made them dumber is what I'm saying.

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

#128

Post by qsera »

cdata wrote: post #99
qsera wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What stops them from submitting PRs from another account?

I can't speak for all, but many mature open source communities have explicit or ad-hoc reputation schemes that are used to triage contributions. A fresh account means starting over with zero reputation, which in turn means your contributions wait at the back of the line.

ability to create low effort PR means that they can reset the reputation as much as they can..

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

#129

Post by createful »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #57
throwaway2037 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Linus Torvalds regarding the Linux kernel is reasonably similar. He views AI/LLMs as just another tool in the development process. Think about life before and after modern IDEs that features IntelliSense circa 2000. It was night and day. It did not make programmers dumber -- it was a new tool.

Except LLMs actually are making programmers dumber. I personally know people, people whom I know for a fact were good programmers before, who have now completely stopped using their brains. When you ask them why they did something in the code, they say "I don't know, Claude did that and I didn't really question it". There was no such analogous phenomenon with IDEs.

You could also say the same with desktops. Desktops abstracted CLI commands like mv or ls. People who are taught on desktops will get scared when they see a terminal.

Yet programmers will still know commands. Abstractions can make things easier but it doesn't require losing skills.

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

#130

Post by edoceo »

qarl2 wrote: post #20
baggy_trough wrote: post #4

I followed the discussion on debian-vote with interest. I'm glad that the hysterical objections lost, as they seemed quasi-religiously motivated.

> ... hysterical ... quasi-religiously ... I'm beginning to wonder if it might be the case that when my fellow citizens begin to act insane - might it be the result of foreign propaganda.

Home grown propaganda, pretending it's from "the others"
Post reply on HN