FOSS isn’t entirely immune to AI mania (or rather, LLM mania).
I think LLMs can tentatively be used for some useful things, like checking for security bugs in new kernel code. But this does not answer the question whether it should be used, because there are many important points in contra. Apart from massive pollution of the biosphere, it causes also a kind of pollution of collective knowledge and understanding. Which is a very important aspect of FOSS.
For example, if a distribution’s package build code is done by LLMs, it is likely to become harder to understand over time. This is probably not the kind of technical debt which a distribution with limited resources wants to have. And you see, the decisions of individual affect other people to, which is why we have rules.
Just wanted to chime in an say I appreciate your more balanced and or nuanced take on this topic.
I see a lot of hate for AI and for good reason, but it does have its use cases.
Unfortunately, like NFTs when they became popular for scams or whatever the fuck people started doing with them, it quickly became used for making garbage, scamming, and being shoved into everything companies thought it could be.
And the scale at which AI is harming our planet is too great a cost for what it does right now or even if it was amazing at what it did. Theres a lot of issues with it.
Also, polarization is another danger, it can seriously hurt communities, and also can be used against us. (I saw that with some dance communities during COVID.) We need to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis here, or possibly even avoid the journey.
FOSS isn’t entirely immune to AI mania (or rather, LLM mania).
I think LLMs can tentatively be used for some useful things, like checking for security bugs in new kernel code. But this does not answer the question whether it should be used, because there are many important points in contra. Apart from massive pollution of the biosphere, it causes also a kind of pollution of collective knowledge and understanding. Which is a very important aspect of FOSS.
For example, if a distribution’s package build code is done by LLMs, it is likely to become harder to understand over time. This is probably not the kind of technical debt which a distribution with limited resources wants to have. And you see, the decisions of individual affect other people to, which is why we have rules.
Just wanted to chime in an say I appreciate your more balanced and or nuanced take on this topic.
I see a lot of hate for AI and for good reason, but it does have its use cases.
Unfortunately, like NFTs when they became popular for scams or whatever the fuck people started doing with them, it quickly became used for making garbage, scamming, and being shoved into everything companies thought it could be.
And the scale at which AI is harming our planet is too great a cost for what it does right now or even if it was amazing at what it did. Theres a lot of issues with it.
Also, polarization is another danger, it can seriously hurt communities, and also can be used against us. (I saw that with some dance communities during COVID.) We need to navigate between Scylla and Charybdis here, or possibly even avoid the journey.