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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"

#381

Post by timcobb »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #283
timcobb wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's my understanding that this same debate raged when writing became a thing. Many viewed it with suspicious, or derision, as memorization was the big intellectual thing. So writing and reading back to remember was terrible. It's true it was a dependence, but the value was too high. With reading and writing a person could work on and synthesize from a far wider range of concurrent materials than one could with just…

Yeah, exactly -- when we automated muscles in the industrial revolution, it was fine. Today, we're automating thinking. And, while there are people that still lift weights for fun, it's not needed professionally any more. I think we'll end up in the same place with thinking -- education is probably going to be a hobby, not a requirement.

I bet education will be more important than ever. Prestige, status etc to distinguish yourself. "Taste is all that's left," as someone said here.

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

#382

Post by TheNastyPatty »

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

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 development) and point B (the environment) as you can get. On the other hand, please explain what the hell veganism has to do with Debian development? Like what are you talking about.

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

#383

Post by selimthegrim »

a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #279
nixpulvis wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue with AI is not its obvious value, it's our dependence on it. I worry what will happen to me when I am cut off for some reason. Local models are going to be really important and hopefully computing costs don't make it too prohibitive.

If you're cut off for some reason, you won't code -- but if you're cut off from a power plant, you also won't code. We're reaching the end of scalability for human brains, so we're offloading it. Sure, it means that selling intellectual labor is reaching the end of the line, and the value of learning will drop, but there's a lot more wealth that will be generated.

But for a beautiful moment in time we created a lot of value for shareholders.

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

#384

Post by smallerfish »

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???

We need sufficiently severe penalties for vibe coding. First time out we break your legs, but if you come back with another vibed patch its around the back of the barn for you.

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

#385

Post by insanitybit »

skydhash wrote: post #365
insanitybit wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That not knowing your API to the core makes you a bad programmer. Seriously, this was a huge thing in C and C++, where you had to know/remember/know to look up very specific error codes and conditions in an API and if you didn't then it was very much considered to be a skill issue. This was maybe 15 years ago.

> Seriously, this was a huge thing in C and C++, where you had to know/remember/know to look up very specific error codes and conditions in an API and if you didn't then it was very much considered to be a skill issue. It was not unless you were part of some very weird circle. There was always manuals and other references that listed everything about a platform or library. Then we got ‘man’ and ‘info’. And I remember…

I'm not sure what you're saying, or how it is not what I'm saying? You're giving examples of places to read documentation, and I'm saying that the expectation was that behaviors caused by not checking documentation would be your fault. If that isn't your experience, cool, it was definitely mine when posting on forums online 15-16 years ago.

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

#386

Post by AlotOfReading »

brookst wrote: post #139
zaneyard wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With AI people aren't reading, writing, or thinking about the code. I would not say something that helps me remember a function name is comparible.

I’m genuinely curious why it matters to make abstract moral judgments about the differences between remembering function names and deep understanding of the syntax used in a function. Why don’t we just care about results? Code quality, performance, clarity are all measurable. Why bother with philosophical positions on these?

How do you trust the results of a black box that are hard to verify? Most of us use proxies that are easier to check, like historical competence and maturity. For example, it's difficult to verify my compiler produces a binary that correctly implements the code I wrote. I can partially validate the result with testing, but when I send it out into the world to handle unknown inputs I'm trusting that the compiler has done its job correctly. I can have that trust because I know the compiler people (in aggregate) have thought very hard about correctness, and the project is mature enough that bugs are rare. If the GCC developers tomorrow were to start merging anything that passed the test suite and some other list of objective metrics, my trust would rightly decrease.

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

#387

Post by keeda »

chuckadams wrote: post #6

New policy boils down to "AI or not, it's still your code and you're responsible for it". I can get on board with that.

As other comments here point out, that's how it always was and always should be. Accountability is an intrinsic part of any professional role. But maybe because it was always implicit (presumably since it's just so obvious!) people forgot about it and have to be reminded now?

This whole phenomenon of "workslop" was a symptom of organizational dysfunction rather than any shortcoming of AI. I really cannot understand how people are producing or even tolerating any amount of workslop -- let alone the epidemic people complain about -- without professional repercussions.

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

#388

Post by doublerabbit »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #174
sph wrote: post #132

On a similar note, is there any distro that explicitly has banned usage of generative AI for their project? Asking for a friend.

The problem is you can't prove if AI was used or not so Debian's response is actually the most logical one. If anyone uses AI they're still responsible for what they submit.

What happens when the AI submitted code has been submitted by AI, Who's then responsible?

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

#389

Post by tulio_ribeiro »

Good outcome, mostly.

Option E beat literally every other option, so it is an unambiguous Condorcet winner.

Bradley–Davidson analysis: https://gist.github.com/tulior/74479b28ddd1e191e5b2d89b8b68c...

The Bradley-Davidson model gives Option 5 a 99.9993% posterior probability of ranking first.

Options 2 and 6 are effectively tied for second.

Option 5 also beat every alternative head-to-head. Its closest matchup was against Option 2, at 57.8% to 42.2%, so the result was decisive overall even though the closest pairwise contest was not a blowout.

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