224
Debian Votes To Allow "Responsible Use Of Generative AI" (www.phoronix.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
134 comments fedilink hide all child comments
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] 47 points 1 month ago (7 children)

The only question I have is why. Genuinely.

Debian exists. It has existed for decades. It works. "Oh but AI makes it faster" so fucking what? We didn't need "faster" for years whilst it worked fine, it's not a product on a deadline.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • hideshow 7 child comments
    •
  • [–] 15 points 1 month ago* (3 children)

    That's true. Nonetheless the maintainers seem to see AI as a valid way to reduce their workload.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 3 child comments
    •
  • [–] 4 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    As someone who has done package management for a distro at one point in my life... after the initial push, it is so incredibly boring.

    I think AI should do all of it. I'm entirely certain that things would be better, not worse, if we did. 99% of problems related to that stuff is because it's so fucking boring that humans just simply cannot pay the kind of attention it requires to be safe.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •
  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Current AI is still like that incredibly knowledgeable senior dev with a drug problem. Everything done by AI still needs to be checked by a human in case the AI just hallucinated the wildest shit even though it did the same thing just right ten times before.
    Right now, AI is a great tool. It will probably become reliable enough to replace human maintainers. But no one knows when that happens.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 1 child comment
    •
  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago (2 children)

    No community distro has the capacity to fork thousands of packages and maintain them. That's what a true no Ai policy would require. I also have to add that the Linux kernel itself would need to be forked and then maintained. Just the latter point alone is enough to make all this moot.

  • permalink
  • fedilink
  • source
  • parent
  • hideshow 2 child comments
    •