This is disappointing.. It would have been good to have at least one major distro that was AI free
This is a very hard decision to reverse out of if it turns out to be a problem in a few years
It would have been good to have at least one major distro that was AI free
Then you'd need to use one without the Linux kernel
Yes.. That was also disappointing :(
The good news is that it could roll back to the current stable Trixie at any point
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. We [encourage] our contributors to disclose whether a contribution was made with AI [assistance], but do not require them to do so.
That last bit is a bad idea
I agree. Disclosure of A.I. use should be mandatory.
My main concern with A.I. use is its ability to hide incompetence. If a new agent introduces code that was entirely written by illegal-software that violates copyright law--A.I.--then that should be made clear, even if competent-programmers review the new inclusion and approve of it. Otherwise people are left with the impression that this new agent is a competent programmer. A.I. use--undisclosed--creates false reputations.
The disclosure being encouraged and not mandatory is purely to protect the egos of programmers currently utilizing A.I. products.
However I do respect their decision and I maintain projects should be self governing.
I disagree. For one, it's unenforceable, just like outright banning it.
But AI assistance can also mean a lot of different things, from outright vibecoding through autocomplete up to only asking it to so review. It diminishes the human work in the eyes of other people, because a simple disclaimer doesn't distinguish between the work done, and also encourages people to point out to AI as a scapegoat for their mistakes.
Good code always was and should always be one where a human is fully responsible for it; if you decide to vibecode and happens to end up with perfect code, good; if you write it fully yourself but it's crap it doesn't absolve you that you didn't use AI...
It's a tool, so use it responsibly like any other tool and stand behind your code no matter what tools you used.
I disagree. For one, it's unenforceable, just like outright banning it.
If people thought "its impossible to catch everyone so why bother trying to catch anyone at all" when making laws, no laws would exist
There's a difference between "not being able to catch everyone" and having effectively no way to catch anyone.
And yes, unfortunately there are plenty of laws with the same issue (especially here and in the past decade or two) and it sucks - it only teaches people to ignore rules and a lot of them make you a criminal for no reason.
But there are ways to catch AI use
...elaborate? Anything that's actually reliable?
But the issue is that in practise, there is no viable way to verify wether or not AI has been used at all. In other words, the disclosure of AI use entirely depends on the person providing the code, wether disclosure is mandated or not.
If there was enforcment to disclose AI use, it would create a false assumption that code which claims no AI use, is verified to contain mo AI use, which again, cannot be verified by anyone.
So it's not that it's hard to enforce, it's not that it's impossible to enforce 100%, it's that there currently is no viable way to enforce it at all.
My main concern with A.I. use is its ability to hide incompetence.
You mean like tab-completion in modern IDEs? Shouldn't devs know all the function calls and methods of the standard libraries of the language they're programming in?
I do respect their decision and I maintain projects should be self governing.
Me too, but I also think that governance isn't as simple as "we get to decide what we do", it also interacts with how well the decision-makers understand their domain and their broader it sits in, both of which are potentially reduced as a consequence of relying on AI.
Also there is the possibility of AI tools dominating workflows and then getting ripped away (either as the corporates raise costs, or the bubble bursts and they collapse), leaving a project overwhelmed with a unmanageably large array of weaknesses. In that scenario self-governance starts to become irrelevant.
And how are they (Debian) going to to make sure this happens?
There's no way to know for sure regardless. Having a policy allows them to take action when they do find it.
Former Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum expressed regret on the results of the vote, writing: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web."
That's very Linus of them:
The mass-extinction causing orphan-crushing torment nexus is a tool, just like other tools we use. And it’s clearly a useful one.
There are other questions around it, like if we should be complicit in killing billions of people, and making more than 50% of genera go extinct, via its CO2e releases and water use, but “is it useful” is no longer one of those questions.
The Debian project has been and will continue to be about the technology.
Sure, the people who use it is important and often a very motivating part of the project, but in the end that’s a side benefit, not the point of the project.
In the Debian community we do open source because it results in better technology, not because of ethical reasons.
And so we make decisions primarily based on technical merit. Not fear of causing a mass extinction.
/s
At first I was afraid that they would allow for an irresponsible use. But no, they explicitly say "responsible", so that danger is no more. I'm very much relieved.
Also they explicitly mention that humans will remain accountable. Not Nature, or Fate, or the gods; mark that. Good thinking there!
Problems solved.
humans will remain accountable
I see this a lot in clanker apologia, but it's never clear what "accountable" actually entails. Unless it's something of the order of a first-offense permanent ban from the project then it's not going to dissuade anyone from being lazy meat proxies.
It's pretty much the same policy as the Linux kernel, but still disappointing.
I've been dumping things left and right as they decide Claude is their buddy, and that won't stop because the same idiots who dropped decent init systems for that RedHat tech bro's mess decided not to block it.
At least the kernel requires disclosure of AI use. The new Debian "policy" doesn't even require that.
I am most concerned about that. If the legal position on copyright of AI code is decided in the future an audit or tracking of AI contributions in the codebase may be necessary to understand risk and exposure.
Granted you can't make people disclose AI assistance with 100% accuracy but I would expect a majority to comply.
Yeah. I think we should seriously start organizing to create a Linux fork free of all that AI slop shit. It's a huge task, but a really necessary one.
disclose whether a contribution was made with AI but do not require them to do so
How is that good? "You should, but if you don't .... nothing happens"
responsible use
Completely subjective and therefore absolutely meaningless when setting up rules/guidelines
IMHO: They talk about having it go through the exact same due diligence as normal contribs and a human has to be responsible. I think it's an acceptable compromise.
I trust their judgement here. I hope this is the right call.
Former Debian Project Leader Lucas Nussbaum expressed regret on the results of the vote, writing: "On a very personal note, I regret that the winning option does not acknowledge all the legitimate concerns around AI: environmental impact, copyright and licensing uncertainty, the health of Free Software communities, and the strain of aggressive scraping on the open web."
I'd expect this from Ubuntu but I was hoping for better from Debian... You know... Being as their whole shtick is stability.
Agreed, that was a large part of why I chose debian (and never considered ubuntu) as my 'back up' distro, just in case my distro of choice (or arch above it) decided to do something daft.
Debian seemed like the logical choice
Deeply disappointing. I was hoping it would be a refuge from AI infection.
It's worth looking at the full results
"Responsible use of AI"? Is that a joke? There is no such a thing as responsible use of AI. Responsible people would refuse to use AI.
But anyway, Linux is already AI. Sticking to any one of those BSDs is the only way out.
NetBSD explicitly don't allow AI code
Alright, what are the alternatives folks?
Gentoo? Gentoo!
(But I'll keep watch to see of they don't revert course because "the models are now too powerful", since it is a policy from 2024)
The policy
Gentoo Council has voted on 2024-04-14 on the following policy:
It is expressly forbidden to contribute to Gentoo any content that has been created with the assistance of Natural Language Processing artificial intelligence tools. This motion can be revisited, should a case be made for such a tool that does not pose copyright, ethical and quality concerns.
This policy affects Gentoo contributions and the official Gentoo projects. It does not prohibit adding packages for AI-related software or software that is being developed with the help of such tools upstream.
chimera-linux https://chimera-linux.org/community/#project-ai-policy
Chimera has a strong no-AI policy for contributions in all of its repositories. Contributors found using LLMs will be barred from further contributing to the project.
We take objection against the use of LLMs primarily on ethical grounds. This is based on many factors, including societal impact of LLM use, ecological impact, and others. We reject arguments about “useful tools” and similar, because technical aspects can never be considered in isolation.
LLM-using contributions additionally have a disproportionate burden on reviewers, their mental health, as well as project resources, which we have limited amounts of.
Chimera is a small project and has limited control over what upstreams do, particularly due to dependencies and widespread use of LLM usage in projects nowadays. We try to do the right thing when possible, preferring appropriate alternatives and so on.
It's hard to be upset. I'm not a Debian maintainer, or even someone paid to program. But here a group of people got together and said yes to allowing AI. I feel like on some level you have to accept that answer. I'm curious why they made that decision I guess.
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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).
Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.
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