Debian Votes To Allow "Responsible Use Of Generative AI"
(www.phoronix.com)
Linux"Responsible use of AI"? Is that a joke? There is no such a thing as responsible use of AI. Responsible people would refuse to use AI.
But anyway, Linux is already AI. Sticking to any one of those BSDs is the only way out.
At first I was afraid that they would allow for an irresponsible use. But no, they explicitly say "responsible", so that danger is no more. I'm very much relieved.
Also they explicitly mention that humans will remain accountable. Not Nature, or Fate, or the gods; mark that. Good thinking there!
Problems solved.
Former Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum expressed regret on the results of the vote, writing: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web."
That's very Linus of them:
The mass-extinction causing orphan-crushing torment nexus is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one.
There are other questions around it, like if we should be complicit in killing billions of people, and making more than 50% of genera go extinct, via its CO2e releases and water use, but “is it useful” is no longer one of those questions.
The Debian project has been and will continue to be about the technology.
Sure, the people who use it is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that’s a side benefit, not the point of the project.
In the Debian community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of ethical reasons.
And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of causing a mass extinction.
/s
The mass-extinction causing orphan-crushing torment nexus is a tool, just like other tools we use.
Well, obviously! Microsoft is using this tool too, and as we can all observe, that's making their competing OS much better and much more desirable.
I'd expect this from Ubuntu but I was hoping for better from Debian... You know... Being as their whole shtick is stability.
Agreed, that was a large part of why I chose debian (and never considered ubuntu) as my 'back up' distro, just in case my distro of choice (or arch above it) decided to do something daft.
Debian seemed like the logical choice
IMHO: They talk about having it go through the exact same due diligence as normal contribs and a human has to be responsible. I think it's an acceptable compromise.
A human cannot be responsible for AI written code.
Even if you personally vet every single line, you are still simply code reviewing an AI before you pass it to someone else.
A human did not write nor understand it, and thus cannot be responsible for it and thus should never submit it.
Not to mention the code review itself becomes a very tedious process: sifting through hundreds of lines of AI garbage and token expiry. It's downright rude to expect a volunteer to check hundreds of lines of garbage you didnt even bother writing.
Signed, disgruntled software engineer who refuses to use my jobs "optional" ai feature
Get ready for the ISO to double in size
Deeply disappointing. I was hoping it would be a refuge from AI infection.
It's worth looking at the full results
This is disappointing.. It would have been good to have at least one major distro that was AI free
This is a very hard decision to reverse out of if it turns out to be a problem in a few years
It would have been good to have at least one major distro that was AI free
Then you'd need to use one without the Linux kernel
Yes.. That was also disappointing :(
The good news is that it could roll back to the current stable Trixie at any point
They're gonna use AI for that too
It's pretty much the same policy as the Linux kernel, but still disappointing.
I've been dumping things left and right as they decide Claude is their buddy, and that won't stop because the same idiots who dropped decent init systems for that RedHat tech bro's mess decided not to block it.
Yeah. I think we should seriously start organizing to create a Linux fork free of all that AI slop shit. It's a huge task, but a really necessary one.
At least the kernel requires disclosure of AI use. The new Debian "policy" doesn't even require that.
I am most concerned about that. If the legal position on copyright of AI code is decided in the future an audit or tracking of AI contributions in the codebase may be necessary to understand risk and exposure.
Granted you can't make people disclose AI assistance with 100% accuracy but I would expect a majority to comply.
The Linux kernel project forces LLMs on all the devs.
The Linux Foundation, that has the Linux kernel project by the balls, forces LLMs on everyone involved.
That's not at all true
There is no way to opt out of Sashiko.
I trust their judgement here. I hope this is the right call.
Former Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum expressed regret on the results of the vote, writing: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web."
char strawberry = "r"
Alright, what are the alternatives folks?
Gentoo? Gentoo!
(But I'll keep watch to see of they don't revert course because "the models are now too powerful", since it is a policy from 2024)
The policy
Gentoo Council has voted on 2024-04-14 on the following policy:
It is expressly forbidden to contribute to Gentoo any content that has been created with the assistance of Natural Language Processing artificial intelligence tools. This motion can be revisited, should a case be made for such a tool that does not pose copyright, ethical and quality concerns.
This policy affects Gentoo contributions and the official Gentoo projects. It does not prohibit adding packages for AI-related software or software that is being developed with the help of such tools upstream.
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Project:Council/AI_policy
I genuinely wonder how they’re going to square this policy with LLM code in the kernel.
Personally, I’m guessing that all distros will eventually bend and allow LLM code.
I think this bit makes it clear that shipping LLM code from the kernel that wasn't contributed by Gentoo is fine:
This policy affects Gentoo contributions and the official Gentoo projects. It does not prohibit adding packages for AI-related software or software that is being developed with the help of such tools upstream.
When an LLM agent reports a huge security bug and provides the solution and the only solution is explicitly exactly what it wrote.
Checkmate!
So I'm going quitting Debian. Not only quitting it, but I'm seriously considering starting to actively boycott and sabotage them. I know that I may not achieve any big change on my own, or even if I had collaborators, but at least I will know that I was on the right side of history.
By all means quit using Debian. That’s your prerogative. But claiming you are going to sabotage a community volunteer run, non profit, open source community is just dumb. Good news is that you won’t actually do it, but still, you sound dumb.
Do you know what actually I mean by sabotage? No, I don't mean hack them or anything like that, I just mean interfere with them because, non profit or not, what they're doing with AI is totally unethical and prejudicial
Rip Debian
I will wait to see if it actually comes at the detriment of the program.
Debian was already vibe led, being vide coded now is just par for the course.
If this AI distro crap keeps going, I'm going back to using my Android (Pixel 10a and GrapheneOS) phone for everything. Not the best option but better than using a vibe-coded distro.
All I need is a monitor and wall mount for the monitor. Connect a hub and charger (phone does pass-through charging), a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse.
Some workflow will have to change, Cryptpad instead of LibreOffice for example.
If you think Gemini isn’t deep in android development now, you’re mistaken.
Maybe you’re ok if you stay on 13 or maybe 14.
No Gemini in GrapheneOS.
Graphene isn’t using Gemini, nor including the Gemini app in user space.
But they’re still ingesting AOSP from Google’s source drops and Google is 100% using Gemini to make that.
Same as Debian is going to allow devs to use LLMs to develop for Debian.
Here I was waiting for linux to be truly viable on mobile, because android is... android, and now linux is... linux
At least I have a pencil I can probably trust
People out there who think they can avoid AI this way are really just delusional. Its everywhere at this point.
If its not in the software you are using, the software that runs the software has it. Or the software that runs the software that runs the software. Its inescapable.
You're on the internet? Millions of lines of AI code are probably involved in you seeing this message across the entire infrastructure needed to allow this.
apathy is evils best friend
"ai" could be replaced with 'slavery' or another myriad of fucked up things humans do in your point.
Decent people have to be against indecent things, even if they are beating their heads against a wall because of the other people who do not care.
I have 2 installations of debian that will now be deleted.
In favour of what? The kernel itself is now worked on with ai tooling. I don't see how you can get away from it...
There is still NetBSD with its clear "no AI code allowed" stance out there...
I am not against AI useage, but having it slowly creeping into every project is concerning.
Is there already a list of distributions / projects out there that decided against it's useage?
by going elsewhere i imagine
linus's will be linus's eh
I had debian installed as back up distro's, just for something that wasn't arch based. The debian partitions were deleted from the arch based distro's installed on both pc's today. I was waiting to see which way debian was heading on this, but was fairly certain they were going to shit due to the choices that were being voted on, and how none of them appeared to be anti-ai. They seemed deliberately verbose knowing that most people scan text at best these days.
Time to look around again I guess, I've never looked into BSD, Hurd, Solaris... https://distrowatch.com/search.php
Time to look around again I guess, I've never looked into BSD, Hurd, Solaris...
The GNU Hurd is probably not going to be for you unless you have Ethernet and an old thinkpad or dell laptop. In the mailing list, I know the main devs are usually against ai contributions, although I am unaware if they have a policy.
I would recommend using netBSD because the devs have a clear stance on no rust and no llm usage. There is also openBSD which has the best code quality of the three BSD's, and I think had 2 vulnerabilities in a decade.
BSD would be the likely one to look into first... because I have heard of it. I have also heard of solaris, but never had a clue what it was.
All I want is an os I can trust, that is logical, works, and stays out of my way. I already have that, or at least did until these aiholes came along.
I have also heard of solaris, but never had a clue what it was.
I am pretty sure that is the enterprise OS owned by Oracle. It is closed source.
All I want is an os I can trust, that is logical, works, and stays out of my way.
NetBSD or openBSD is your best bet. You will have to install the desktop environment yourself though, unless you like their cwm. FreeBSD is the most popular BSD, but they are using AI to find security vulnerabilities.
please don't downvote me jensen huang/sam altman/pedophile pope trump/alex carp/emperor palpatine/elon musk. omg.
Do you feel weird lately? Maybe you need to change something in your life to feel better. If you need help, please seek out medical or psychological professionals, even if you just want to confirm you're healthy.
from my POV Debian has fallen already.
I hope either Alpine does not commit the same mistake or Chimera becomes a major distro.
