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Are Anti-AI Linux distributions practical?

2 days ago by tumbling4986 to c/linux

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I have been using Linux for over 8 months now, and my primary distribution of choice was Debian.

Debian recently conducted a community vote on allowing AI contributions, and it ended up allowing responsible AI contributions.

What is this responsible? How can AI commits be responsible? There are thousands of reasons to not use AI, and the primary reason is AI is a thief.

How did you react to Debian's decision? Did you switch distros? Which one was your option, and why?

Also, when the Linux kernel itself allows AI commits, is there any practicality in a Linux distribution strictly limiting or restricting AI commits?

I have no serious usability issue with Debian now but am concerned about the use of AI even in my Linux distribution. Should I keep going with Debian or consider any other distribution, as I only have 8+ months of experience as a daily Linux user? I tried almost all Linux distros and am comfortable with everything except Void Linux and highly complex ones like Gentoo.

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mildseason 6 points a day ago

AI is a tool. You already trust the developers to build an operating system with the tools available.

From the Debian announcement

The Debian Project nevertheless expects that all contributions submitted to Debian, regardless of how and with which tools they were produced, satisfy the same standards of quality, correctness, maintainability, and legal compliance. The use of a generative AI tool does not diminish the contributor's responsibility for the work they submit. Contributors are expected to understand, review, test, and, where appropriate, modify AI-assisted output before incorporating it into Debian. Blindly accepting or uploading AI-generated material without appropriate human review is inconsistent with Debian's established development practices.

It's quite clear they don't allow vibe coding. As you say, the kernal itself allows AI contributions in a similar way.

If you're worried about the ethical aspects of AI then you'll probably have to move to NetBSD. If you're only worried about quality this is a non issue.

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tabular 6 points a day ago

Trust is 3 parts; authenticity, competance and empathy. Trust is broken if any of those are insufficient.

If others believe AI creation and AI use hurts people then leaving that unaddressed makes one appear to lack empathy.

"Quality of code" ultimately boils down to judging how it may effect people (reading it, changing it, using the software it compiles to). To worry about code quality is only to care about people. Only caring sometimes is inconsistent - it questions their character.

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mildseason 1 point a day ago

You make good points however you can't stop a person doing something because it goes against your beliefs.

In this case the Debian developers had a vote and the majority agreed that using AI was ok.

I've read the post and they still have a code of conduct, they still have standards that they will keep. That's good enough for me to continue trusting the devs.

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tabular 2 points a day ago

There are 2 tools to stop someone from harming others: words or violence. If people disagree an action is harmful to others then we aught to use our words to discover who's belief better represents reality.

I think using AI to write software could be okay but the AI in use today isn't. AI makers circumvent our social licenses and redistribute our code covertly through a mathematical blender. Debian OS authors agreed that there are legal unknowns regarding the copyrightability of generated code and didn't say AI was okay or bad one way or the other. Debain should already know today's AI spits at our faces.

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mildseason 1 point a day ago

I'm not disputing that AI has severe issues. I think it's more appropriate for governments to focus on effective regulation than open source developers disallowing useful tools.

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dusk 1 point 20 hours ago

The majority of governments are at least partially at the mercy of the usa government in this respect though, easily one of the most absurd, and corrupt governments on the planet.

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mildseason 1 point 2 hours ago

Indeed! It's more inportant than ever to switch to open source software, which is why i dont see the point in placing restrictions on developers.

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