I tried use AI to help me with self host. It gave me incorrect information and I wasted hours trying to read the docs and the AI slop to make sense of everything.

In the end, reading the docs was all that I needed.

I already left !programming@programming.dev because I was sick of seeing AI related posts. I would appreciate it if this didn’t also become a place where people talk about AI constantly, whether it’s related to FOSS or not. My ask is: Move the AI related posts to an AI-adjacent community or create one. Perhaps I’m not the only one who shares this wish.

it seems like AI means a lot more people have been building open source tools.

TBH I haven’t seen this. AFAIK I’m still using the same open source apps made by the same people. I haven’t seen a single “AI” app that I would add to my stack or replace an existing app with.

Are there some examples of some great apps that have been built with “AI”? Like a list somewhere?

Personally I would really like a clone of GarageBand for Linux. So if an “AI” can whip that up real quick, I would really appreciate it.

your premise is flawed. using AI to do this shit is like using a twin-engine F-14 Tomcat’s afterburner to clear the snow from your driveway. and to get you started to ditch your shovels and shit and help your muscles atrophy, Northrop-Grumman is subsidising the insanely humongous fuel bill and maintenance for the first year.

it’s not sustainable. it’s not ethical. it’s fucking disastrous to the environment, local and at large. and it tends to blow up the house you’ve built, for no fucking reason.

I can see some value using AI. I treat it like a search engine, since Google, DDG, Bing, etc all seem to suck now favoring ads and purchased result slots rather than finding what you’re looking for. Using AI helps since it’s doing several searches for you. But as others have said, the results can be flawed, particularly when searching for niche topics.

I have zero coding experience and used ChatGPT (I think) to vibe code a simple battery GUI for my Thinkpad running linux since the OS version I had would not display the internal and external batteries separately. Technically it worked, but it looked and ran like ass.

Ultimately I think it falls apart when things go wrong and trying to coax the robot to help you get your way out of trouble, which can be very problematic.

Many people have “itches to scratch” and some interest in development but little time to learn, so AI coding tools will allow them to scratch many of those itches without paying $ to others or investing that time (for better or for worse). Even as an experienced (but no longer full time) coder, I use it to scratch itches when I don’t have the time/lust.

Often enough, you’ll find some customizable app that does 90% of what you want, with a bunch of features you don’t care about. Writing personalized apps is a cool new thing, giving you exactly the functionality that you want. Many times these will be based on OSS or open libraries, which the AI just glues together.

Will this personalized development result in new quality OSS apps, though? I doubt it. We also don’t really need more sloppy code on github.

There are a lot of personal apps that just happen to have an OSS license… and then there are OSS projects, built and maintained as OSS community projects. It takes dedication to run a real OSS project, build a community, handle issues, websites, etc.

Will AI coding tools assist developers of real OSS projects? Sure… many are already using it to varying degrees. We’ll increasingly see it being used to find and fix bugs and security issues ahead of time - security researchers & blackhats are already having a field day.

I’m conflicted because more people joining the open source community and contributing is great. That said, open source is an ecosystem that covers everything from the application, to the build system and the code editor used to write the code. A lot of the people contributing to FOSS care a lot about the quality of their code, and being part of it means respecting the community.

But most of the AI models being used to write vibe coded or ai assisted code is not at all sustainable, it’s a huge part of the toolset that is locked behind corporate infrastructure. A lot of code spit out by LLMs is rarely workable or designed to be extended or transformed, and very few are critical of the quality of the code. I know even at work I’ve been frustrated at having to fix, work with or re factor code that has been written with the help of ai.

This is such a broad topic, that we need some qualifiers to focus. Ai tools in servers from big companies is an absolute no. I am experimenting for fun with local tools on my hardware only. Then there is a huge difference in generative Ai tools that generate code, assist tools to in example translate human languages, or if you use it to ask questions in example. So there is a huge difference in how, for what, and what you actually use Ai.

Ai tools can be useful, under the right circumstances and conditions. But it comes with the problem that they mostly have scraped data without consent and ignoring the licenses. And for server based Ai you also give up your privacy and you need internet connection at all times; loosing control. Then there is this generating code thing. If you don’t program yourself and don’t understand and generate lots of code, then it will be spaghetti code, with hallucinations and you don’t understand every detail to check it.

Things are moving so fast that anything that doesn’t work today, will work tomorrow, or ‘next week’. Take all the failed attempts from others, as possibilities of what you will be able to do in a week, and catalog what you think could be beneficial for you later. They are all on the plate.

AI is a technically a cognitive extension much like pen/paper - we are offloading cognition externally. So everything you spend mental energy on now, can and will be lessened when AI takes some of your cognitive load off.

Ignore their current baby-step errors. Think about where you spend your thoughts - your cognitive energy, and think of a way an AI could assist you with that. Worry too much ? Need a push/nudge with social connections ? Tired of seeking bargains at shops that cheat you ? Have something you find difficult ?

Then imagine what you can do with like-minded people from all over the world.