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Yes, no AI is now a feature - the Document Foundation (blog.documentfoundation.org)
submitted 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) by to c/technology@beehaw.org
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TDF employs good reasoning and applies high standards that other open-source projects should emulate. I'd recommend reading the full article but I particularly liked

No telemetry of any kind. LibreOffice does not collect usage data, and this must also apply to AI features.

And (emphasis mine)

It must be installable , removable, and absent from the user interface for those who do not wish to use it, including administrators deploying the software across thousands of workstations

I don't think shots were intended to be fired at the Mozilla corporation, who can't stop talking about their default, opt-out AI, but it paints a stark picture of the difference between a company that preaches privacy and choice, versus a company that actually provides those things.

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[–] 49 points 1 month ago (8 children)

You'd think that "no AI" would be an easy feature to implement, and it's much in demand. Strange that it seems to be beyond the abilities of so many software developers.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 month ago (5 children)

    It's mostly just management dictating from the top-down. I've heard everything from "it's our company's direction" to "investors are only funding AI expenses" and nothing actually grounded on (B2C) customer feedback.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 days ago (2 children)

    Colleagues in my last company are measured by their token consumption. Not how little they use, but if they use up all their budget in a month. If not, they're obviously bad for whatever they're measuring.

    I was a software tester ages ago and I was measured by the amount of bugs I found. Didn't matter if it was a typo or some complicated crash that only occurred when all the stars aligned. I thought it was peak idiocy back then. But this new thinking beats that by far.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 days ago (1 child)

    Yep, tokenmaxxing is a thing at some companies now. It often aligns with the same people competing to see who can generate the most lines of slop code (losc, which is different than sloc of course).

    It wasn't long ago where people understood that every line of code you write is a line of code that could have a bug in it. The good devs still know this, but many are also being forced to generate shitty code just to appease their shitty management now.

    As an aside, I have yet to see a case where tokenmaxxing generates a profit for either the consumer or the provider. It just reeks of the same "market capture at all costs" mindset that have plagued SV startups for so long.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 month ago

    You would be surprised how much "We need AI to take over the world completely or there is no chance in hell to ever get our insane investments back" motivates people to push bullshit on you.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 month ago

    It's more a question of agency than ability. Take this excerpt from the announcement:

    For a company that sells subscriptions, an AI assistant justifies a price increase and strengthens the case for keeping all documents within its own infrastructure. The functionality and the business model reinforce each other, so integration is not only attractive but almost mandatory.

    Anyone employed in such a company will have a hard time resisting. There's a mix of unrest and despair in the discipline right now. I've met colleagues drastically change careers over this. Sick leaves over mental health too.

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