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LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

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Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#151

Post by rlpb »

clcaev wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #18

Don'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 t…

Of the 3 proposals, the 2nd/B seems to be more of an “informed consent” model while the other two are seeking a comprehensive exclusion. I hope earnest dialogue and driving to a broad consensus among significant contributors is forthcoming. Notable are the endorsements, which are balanced over all three options, perhaps indicating only 1/3 are supportive of a more permissive position. If this represents core contribu…

> Notable are the endorsements, which are balanced over all three options...

I don't think this is notable. The process requires five seconders, so you're just seeing the set of people who seconded asynchronously before there were obviously enough that others didn't bother. The culture is to avoid unnecessary noise and leave it for the vote.

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#152

Post by CamouflagedKiwi »

hparadiz wrote: post #97
Meneth wrote: post #36

Gentoo chose to ban LLMs two years ago. They seem to be doing well.

I've been running Gentoo for 20 years. What you consider "Gentoo" is simply the package manager and "ebuilds"; instructions to build upstream packages. Right now I'm using LLMs to make my own ebuilds and maintain them. The packages I am compiling are basically vanilla upstream Linux packages. It is laughable to suggest Gentoo doesn't use AI made code because upstream already has it.

Their policy doesn't cover upstream, it's only for the Gentoo project specifically. It's clearly infeasible for them (or Debian) to try to control what their upstreams do, especially with the kernel accepting LLM contributions now.

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#154

Post by vrighter »

clcaev wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #18

Don'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 t…

Of the 3 proposals, the 2nd/B seems to be more of an “informed consent” model while the other two are seeking a comprehensive exclusion. I hope earnest dialogue and driving to a broad consensus among significant contributors is forthcoming. Notable are the endorsements, which are balanced over all three options, perhaps indicating only 1/3 are supportive of a more permissive position. If this represents core contribu…

you can neither check nor enforce any conditions. So the right answer is A

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#155

Post by Kon5ole »

Debian is conservative so it makes sense that they have proposals for not using LLM's. They'll need another year or so but I am convinced it'll soon be obvious that any "no LLM" policy is untenable.

We are in the "cool new toy, let's make slop" phase, but we already see how careful use of LLM's can make high quality code faster and better than humans can do solo.

Once they are over the learning threshold, every good developer I know actually likes to use LLM's, as they allow them to realize their visions faster. If Debian has a "no LLM" policy I think they will eventually only have devs who like to type.

I should add that of course the "immoral companies burning too much energy" argument has actual merit, no matter how useful LLM's are or aren't. But I don't think Debian should die on that hill, as the only difference it will make is that we no longer have Debian.

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#156

Post by logicallee »

This is a very difficult problem. LLM's don't learn from reasoning about trade-offs and from their personal experience, so systems made with AI assistance stop obeying the unwritten rules of why things are the way they are, that comes from the maintainers' decades of experience.

On the other hand, they can produce and test anything anyone asks in minutes, as well as find security issues that lay dormant at the seams for decades.

There is no great answer here.

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#157

Post by lifthrasiir »

probably_wrong wrote: post #146
hkalbasi wrote: post #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.

I would like to offer this comment from three days ago as counterpoint: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49013694

Common sense testing only tells about the presence of common sense, that's it. It is clear from recent events that LLMs do definitely possess some sort of intelligence even though it might have been polarized to certain domains.

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#158

Post by gsliepen »

clcaev wrote: post #27
simonw wrote: post #18

Don'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 t…

Of the 3 proposals, the 2nd/B seems to be more of an “informed consent” model while the other two are seeking a comprehensive exclusion. I hope earnest dialogue and driving to a broad consensus among significant contributors is forthcoming. Notable are the endorsements, which are balanced over all three options, perhaps indicating only 1/3 are supportive of a more permissive position. If this represents core contribu…

> Notable are the endorsements, which are balanced over all three options, perhaps indicating only 1/3 are supportive of a more permissive position.

That's not the case. First, you can't really extrapolate from endorsers to all of the Debian Developers. Second, endorsers might not have looked at the other proposals at all, and the fact that they only endorsed one option doesn't mean they don't support the others. And you can also endorse an option if you believe it is a valid, useful proposal to add to the GR, even if you don't agree with it personally.

But most importantly, when Debian votes, you don't vote for a single option, instead you rank the choices, and apart from the given options, another option "further discussion" is always added to the list of choices. It's likely that many who rank the most permissive option first will rank the lesser permissive option second, above "further discussion", or they could even give options the same rank (if they really don't think one is better than the other).

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#159

Post by gsliepen »

Kon5ole wrote: post #155

Debian is conservative so it makes sense that they have proposals for not using LLM's. They'll need another year or so but I am convinced it'll soon be obvious that any "no LLM" policy is untenable. We are in the "cool new toy, let's make slop" phase, but we already see how careful use of LLM's can make high quality code faster and better than humans can do solo. Once they are over the learning threshold, every good…

We'll see how much people like it once the cheap subscriptions end and the actual cost of LLMs (+ profit margin) is asked of them. Although I'm suspecting that eventually, machines that are good enough to run reasonably useful models will become cheap enought that most developers will have those, but that might be some years from now.

Debian is run by volunteers, and I think Debian Developers would not like it if they would have to pay to work on it, thus there will be some aversion to (at least frontier) LLMs.

Re: LLM Usage in Debian: Three Proposals

#160

Post by dgellow »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #142
dgellow wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the stake high? Doesn’t seem to be the case to me

It is a project-wide concern, so the stake is obviously high.

That feels pretty easy to revert the decision later on if that doesn’t work for some reasons
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