AI discussions

johnraff · 2024-05-09 01:41:16

This is quite an interesting discussion on whether Debian, as a project, should agree on a policy about the use of AI. People make many different points.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-project … 00000.html

Early days yet, and things are changing day by day, but the implications are huge and it can't just be ignored.

Last edited by johnraff (2026-04-15 05:33:34)

hhh · 2024-05-09 02:39:26

Holy horse manure, what a fustercluck.

johnraff · 2024-05-09 04:13:26

I thought some of it was interesting anyway...

Martin · 2024-05-09 08:10:29

I may have posted this before but here it goes anyway as I think it is relevant:
https://spectrum.ieee.org/ai-software

Here is another take on this:
https://trace.yshui.dev/2024-05-copilot.html

/Martin

dmontaine · 2024-05-09 08:13:45

I agree that it is an interesting discussion. My take; AI (LLM) will progress at a faster pace than any human attempt to control it.

Sector11 · 2024-05-09 14:37:40

Diving in and swimming around a bit I found this;

Gentoo has always stood out as something different, something that worked for people for whom mainstream distros were lacking. I think adding "made by real people" to the list of our advantages would be a good thing — but we need to have policies in place, to make sure shit doesn't flow in.

"made by real people" ← totally agree!

I agree with hhh and johnraff - interersing fustercluck.

Loved the articles Martin linked to.

In many ways, we live in the world of The Matrix. If Neo were to help us peel back the layers, we would find code all around us.

And that's only the tip of the iceberg I think.

Hmm, should I be scared?

I am; a little. But I'm closer to my EOL than I am to my DOB so hopefully I'll miss a lot of the fustercluck as hhh put it.

No I don't dwell on it, don't "panic" on it but I sure as hell don't like it!

dmontaine wrote:

I agree that it is an interesting discussion. My take; AI (LLM) will progress at a faster pace than any human attempt to control it.

BINGO! Put to words what I feel and in MHO it's already slipping between our fingers like sand. And once out, there's no putting it back in.

hhh · 2024-05-09 18:56:05

Red Hat announced the launch of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux AI the other day...

https://www.redhat.com/en/about/press-r … e-linux-ai

https://www.redhat.com/en/products/ai

https://github.com/RedHatOfficial/rhelai-dev-preview

Sector11 · 2024-05-10 11:57:16

First link in hhh's post, I clicked on the link "RHEL AI brings together the open source-licensed Granite large language model (LLM) family from IBM Research." and see:

Architecture: The model architecture is a replica of Meta’s Llama2-7B base variant with MHA, trained with 1M batch size on 2T tokens.

Meta now there's an organization I trust as far as can throw Mount Everest
InYurFaceBook Twitter WhatsApp - yup 100% trustworthy. NOT!
And hosted on the subsidiary of M$; GitHub

the willies.

johnraff · 2025-06-29 02:08:57

A new discussion has been started on Debian.
Talking about an AI-operated OS can you believe? AI taking over things like memory management, power handling...
It's probably just a "hallucination" as one poster said, but the ideas, even if potentially horrifying, are interesting.
You could start here:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-project … 00030.html

DeepDayze · 2025-06-29 03:06:02

AI controlling operating system functions? That sounds pretty wild no doubt. What about AI-developed operating systems and applications that can even patch and update themselves? Mind boggling!

Debian-AI sounds wacky though.

johnraff · 2025-06-29 05:25:18

DeepDayze wrote:

What about AI-developed operating systems and applications that can even patch and update themselves? Mind boggling!

Sure, that's part of what's being discussed. Sounds perfectly feasable...

GalacticStone · 2025-06-29 12:25:39

If Debian starts bundling AI in with it's packages, I will move away from Debian-based distros to something completely AI-free.

I don't want it. I didn't ask for it. And frankly, most normie consumers have zero real world use case for this garbage.

I will not just disable it or toggle it off. I don't want it on my machine at all, ever.

I really hope Debian doesn't go down that road.

GalacticStone · 2025-06-29 12:27:41

DeepDayze wrote:

AI controlling operating system functions? That sounds pretty wild no doubt. What about AI-developed operating systems and applications that can even patch and update themselves? Mind boggling!
Debian-AI sounds wacky though.

NO.

F*** that.

Self-developing and self-updating systems? LOL. F*** no.

Not ever.

Butlerian Jihad time. Unplug it and burn it with fire.

Edit : Upon further reflection and re-reading the Debian thread, I may have overreacted. I hope I am wrong.

I guess what concerns me is the flip attitude towards the real threat that AI poses, not just to the developer's jobs, but to the world itself. Some of the devs seem to have the right take on it, so it will be interesting to see how the discussion evolves. I will withhold any further comment on the issue unless specifically asked.

Feel free to moderate my replies above as needed and I apologize if I was out of line.

Last edited by GalacticStone (2025-06-29 14:34:55)

DeepDayze · 2025-06-29 14:37:14

GalacticStone wrote:

If Debian starts bundling AI in with it's packages, I will move away from Debian-based distros to something completely AI-free.
I don't want it. I didn't ask for it. And frankly, most normie consumers have zero real world use case for this garbage.
I will not just disable it or toggle it off. I don't want it on my machine at all, ever.
I really hope Debian doesn't go down that road.

I would think that AI-related packages would be optional to install if you want to play around with AI and I believe there's a ChatGPT frontend package around.

GalacticStone · 2025-06-29 14:50:29

I had a knee-jerk emotional reaction to it, so perhaps I was being rash. I hope so. But overall, I think the entire tech world is being very greedy and short-sighted in regards to AI in general. And I am seeing more hints of that in the discussion, and that is what concerns me. Hopefully cooler and more ethical heads prevail.

Sector11 · 2025-06-30 03:56:13

I'm of a mind to agree with GS on this one.

I do NOT want AI on my computer in anyway shape or form.
I bothers me that it's a part of cell phone life but I turn it off or disable when and where I can.

I'll just leave these here:
15 Pros and Cons of Artificial Intelligence You Should Know

2. AI can make bad decisions.
When AI goes wrong, it can go really wrong.
AI is also not going to become self-aware and take over the world. That's science fiction. But it can still make big errors or bad decisions. When it does, negative effects happen at scale.
AI systems are deployed at scale across millions of devices. If AI starts making bad or harmful decisions, it could hurt millions of people physically or financially.
A good example of this is self-driving cars. If the AI in charge of a brand of self-driving cars has a flaw, that flaw could show up in thousands or millions of vehicles.

Artificial intelligence: How much energy does AI use?
BOLD
Excuse me, but going to the moon was sci-fi as well as many other aspect of what was one sci-fi that today is common or in development.
640k is enough for everyone!
There is also "political interference" of AI that scares the poop outta me.
Think nuclear power and how we humans have misused that.

OK I'm outta here

johnraff · 2025-06-30 05:39:36

GalacticStone wrote:

Upon further reflection and re-reading the Debian thread, I may have overreacted. I hope I am wrong.

I think maybe so, in this case. My take on that thread is that someone was proposing a new Debian construction, not AI additions to existing packages or to current Debian operating systems. I don't think there's any possibility of AI being added to "Debian", any time in the foreseeable future. And reactions to the OP by other devs showed most people thought it was pretty impractical (though that's a different issue).

But I think the OP had a valid point in that if AI development is left totally in the hands of the oligarchy then we'll all be worse off. They were advocating an open-source development model, and if people want to get stuck in and produce something free and open I say all power to them. Whether or not there is a Debian AI framework, nobody's going to put that genie back in the bottle.

I know two programmers here in Japan IRL, and they both use AI all the time. A has his own company providing cloud services, and B writes software for a big Japanese company.

A takes a cautious approach and seems always looking out for security holes etc.
B uses all the latest tools to churn out databases, e-publishing frameworks etc etc

This article by one of the original developers of the Safari browser came up the other day:
https://kocienda.micro.blog/2025/06/25/ … l-the.html

If a developer can write code 5~10 times faster with AI they're not going to go back to doing everything by hand.

But that doesn't mean users are obliged to have it on their own personal devices. I certainly have no intention of adding AI "assistants" to my smartphone, still less desktop OS!

GalacticStone · 2025-06-30 13:27:33

johnraff wrote:

GalacticStone wrote:
Upon further reflection and re-reading the Debian thread, I may have overreacted. I hope I am wrong.
I think maybe so, in this case. My take on that thread is that someone was proposing a new Debian construction, not AI additions to existing packages or to current Debian operating systems. I don't think there's any possibility of AI being added to "Debian", any time in the foreseeable future. And reactions to the OP by other devs showed most people thought it was pretty impractical (though that's a different issue).
But I think the OP had a valid point in that if AI development is left totally in the hands of the oligarchy then we'll all be worse off. They were advocating an open-source development model, and if people want to get stuck in and produce something free and open I say all power to them. Whether or not there is a Debian AI framework, nobody's going to put that genie back in the bottle.
I know two programmers here in Japan IRL, and they both use AI all the time. A has his own company providing cloud services, and B writes software for a big Japanese company.
A takes a cautious approach and seems always looking out for security holes etc.
B uses all the latest tools to churn out databases, e-publishing frameworks etc etc
This article by one of the original developers of the Safari browser came up the other day:
https://kocienda.micro.blog/2025/06/25/ … l-the.html
If a developer can write code 5~10 times faster with AI they're not going to go back to doing everything by hand.
But that doesn't mean users are obliged to have it on their own personal devices. I certainly have no intention of adding AI "assistants" to my smartphone, still less desktop OS!

You are correct on all points. I had an emotional reaction to the subject without first fully understanding the context of the discussion. It's not the first time I have stuck my foot in my mouth. I was so happy with finally finding a distro I really liked (Bunsen/Debian) that any hint of altering that negatively (IMO) set my mouth off and running.

I think "AI" has valid use cases like your programmer friend, or number crunching, pattern matching, data sorting, scientific research, etc. That genie is not going back in the bottle, nor should it.

I just don't want to see more "AI" assistants and fluff crammed down our throats for those of us who don't want it and have no good use case for it. I don't need a glorified machine algorithm built into my kitchen oven to find me the best apple pie recipes.

And of course, it is preferable for AI to be open source and available for outside auditing of the code. If the Linux world can put AI fully into open source, then I support that. But, I still don't want it on my machine personally. I've read too many science fiction novels to trust a machine. lol.

Next time, I will shut up and think before shooting off my mouth. Apologies again.

Last edited by GalacticStone (2025-06-30 13:28:39)

Sector11 · 2025-06-30 15:51:49

GalacticStone wrote:

{snip}
Next time, I will shut up and think before shooting off my mouth. Apologies again.

WHY! Good topic and nice to see some ideas of what others think.

John, as per usual, you said it MUCH better than I could have.

This is so true:

Whether or not there is a Debian AI framework, nobody's going to put that genie back in the bottle.

greenjeans · 2025-06-30 18:13:15

Use AI as a tool i.e. search-engine, a type of bash-completion, spitting out code frameworks etc. = Absolutely
Having it on my own machine/OS = No way dude.

But dang, "Butlerian jihad" seems a little extreme, lol, made my wife giggle when she read that as she's a huge fan of the novels.

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