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Void Linux maintainer orphans 100+ packages over AI policy dispute
(www.phoronix.com)
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this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2026
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Or choose not to, just because it's there doesn't make it mandatory or even a good idea.
It’ll be all around you. It’ll be forced on you whether you liked it or not. Do you have a phone? An android? iOS? They’ve both been using AI religiously. Hell, even the Linux kernel now has AI code. I get that you don’t like it, but you won’t be able to not use something that was made with it.
I didn’t say i didn’t like it, i said it wasn't mandatory to use it.
Your comment (and the context of this post) implied active usage, which is what i was responding to.
If you want to come at it from a "there is no ethical consumerism" point of view you might be right that it is, or will be, everywhere.
There is still a distinction between the choice to actively use it and the pseudo-passive background knowledge that it might have been used as part of something in your daily life..
Like the knowledge that modern consumer electronics supply chains have a prominent core of slavery and exploitation doesn't make buying a phone the same as owning a slave.
"It's already everywhere, so you might as well use it" isn't a good catch-all policy and i don't think it's a good approach to this specific scenario.
But you do you.
It might have some sensible uses (bug screening was mentioned) but if it causes a massive, devastating environmental load, it still might better to either not use it, or very sparingly.
A bit like opioids: They can cause a warm fuzzy feeling, and sometimes they are needed in medicine, but overall using them all the time would mean the disadvantages and costs are higher than the advantages.
Shredding the environment is a very high cost. I do not understand how people don´t get how serious is our climate situation. We only have this one wonderful planet. We are about to destroy it. There is no other place in the universe where we can go to and have a happy life.
This part isn't really down to AI though, we're going to continue seeing huge increases in demand for electricity as more and more of the world industrializes and moves into middle class. This almost purely comes down to changing how we create electricity and that change needs to happen or we're just as fucked either way.
We simply cannot conserve our way out of the emissions problem around electricity generation; the only option really is aggressive renewable and/or nuclear generation. And at that point, the extra electricity generation of AI use isn't really an issue.
There are also the concerns around water use and cooling but that's pretty much purely down to needed regulation like any other industry; there's no real reason it needs to be wasteful with drinking water sources.
Where I see it used pretty effectively is relatively simple automation of menial data tasks in the corporate world among non programmers. Basically, it's bringing the kind of petty automation that people with a little programing experience have always been using to quietly automate their work, to the masses. We're talking things like automatic SQL pulls for data that was previously being manually pulled.
That kind of thing does a lot for efficiency and isn't even replacing programmers, as no companies would ever dedicate dev time to that kind of individual automation.
I tend to agree with the other guy, my experience in the corporate world is it is not going away. The hype some C levels are still high on about automating entire departments or AI app creation is ridiculous and will die off, but that kind of front lines, non-sexy, menial work... I can't see that going anywhere.
You could say the same about cars. An US American might not be able to imagine life without them. But while trucks, vans, and ambulances have their meaningful use, many European cities are moving away from allowing personal cars as dominant means of transport because bicycles and public transport are frankly better and do not impose such a high cost on the community.
Coming back to the AI topic, saying "it is here to stay" is not a valid reason to avoid discussion what it is good for, what are the costs. whether the Linux communities are willing to pay those costs, and whether there are perhaps better solutions for what AI promises.
Sports will never go away but that doesn't mean I have to watch them the best way I can. We don't have to use AI even if it doesn't go away.
‘AI’ doesn’t exist, at least when that term is meant to reference Artificial Intelligence in relation to LLMs, as they are intrinsically incapable of possessing or providing comprehension.
LLMs aren’t going away, but that doesn’t translate to an expectation that we should all have to be exposed to their explosively imprecise slop ingestion and excretions.
This fascistic, rape culture rhetoric further diminishes arguments of its inevitability. If that’s your kink, go ahead and debase yourself, but just like religious dogma, it ceases to be acceptable or tolerable the moment it’s imposed on those who don’t, or can’t, provide explicit, informed consent.
They're still within the field of AI study. Go to any major research conference.
‘AI’ is a marketing term, and has been since the term was conjured in 1956. Anyone who treats it as anything beyond that classification is a charlatan trying to punch down and grift others who know less than the little they do.
I suppose me and the rest of my colleagues at AAAI, IJCAI, FLAIRS, etc. don't know what we're talking about then
Studying something doesn’t make the subject legitimate. There are plenty of academic fields rooted in imaginary conjurings, like theology, economics, and business.
I trust you and your colleagues do, in fact, know what you’re talking about; my argument is if you’re claiming any function or output of a LLM should be in any way considered adjacent to intelligence, what you’re saying is gibberish.
So you just don't understand what the term or field are. Shocker.
But I in an illegitimate field so what do I know. XD
I don't find the things I can run on my own computer very useful, so I'll pass.