I have been using Linux for over 8 months now, and my primary distribution of choice was Debian.

Debian recently conducted a community vote on allowing AI contributions, and it ended up allowing responsible AI contributions.

What is this responsible? How can AI commits be responsible? There are thousands of reasons to not use AI, and the primary reason is AI is a thief.

How did you react to Debian’s decision? Did you switch distros? Which one was your option, and why?

Also, when the Linux kernel itself allows AI commits, is there any practicality in a Linux distribution strictly limiting or restricting AI commits?

I have no serious usability issue with Debian now but am concerned about the use of AI even in my Linux distribution. Should I keep going with Debian or consider any other distribution, as I only have 8+ months of experience as a daily Linux user? I tried almost all Linux distros and am comfortable with everything except Void Linux and highly complex ones like Gentoo.

  • tinsukE@lemmy.world
    21·
    3 days ago

    It might be a tool, but it is naïve not take all of its externalities into account.

    From tante’s piece:

    Usefulness is not an objective, fully abstract property: A thing is not useful for everyone or in general but mostly just for specific people in specific contexts. And useful never comes for free.

    But let’s take a step back and use a different example: Child labor. Child labor is very “useful” if you want cheap labor. It’s 100% deplorable to use it or accept it.

    Edit: a good source of said externalities: https://codeberg.org/ethical-foss/open-slopware/src/branch/main/why_not_llms.md

    • mildseason@sopuli.xyz
      2·
      3 days ago

      Is using AI as bad as child labour?

      I don’t believe so. But i don’t believe in copyright laws either. If a developer chooses to use AI it’s their choice.

      Obviously best case scenario is they use a local open weights model. I believe this will be more commonplace in a few years.

      I think a skilled developer using AI to improve open source software is a case of the ends justifying the means.

      Edit: the link you provided highlights the problems with large capitalist corporations owning the compute power and generic AI use by the untrained population more than the issue of skilled developers contributing to open source software.

      While these things are a problem i don’t believe a distro should stop contributions just because a developer consulted an LLM.