Simon Richter [24/Feb 1:54am +09] wrote: > No, I expect the people performing the simple tasks with AI assistance will no > longer gain the necessary understanding to graduate from there and take on > more complex tasks over time, but this has been how we've traditionally gained > members. > > Commercial software development is, in my opinion, already doing it wrong to > look at this through a productivity angle, because they are ignoring the > long-term effects this has on the market. For a community project, this is > even more wrong, because we can't even throw money at failures. > > That's my point: even if AI were to deliver all that is promised and the > legal, ecological and economical problems were solved, it is still not a good > fit for Debian, so debating whether the water usage amortizes over a greater > number of queries[1] or whether the legal system agrees with the people with > the deep coffers is the second step, and presumes that we > > 1. actually want it, > 2. can use it in a way that is consistent with our values, and > 3. can build social structures for the project to keep operating in this > changed landscape > > We are divided on 1, which is why we're having this debate at all, and we will > not reach a consensus here. I personally detest it, because it's taking over > precisely the fun aspects of coding and leaves me with the kind of drudgework > that I used to raise my consulting fees for. There is a reason I only do one > or two hours of code review per day at work, and spend the rest actively > developing code that is as easy to review as possible. > > For 2, I think that it is mostly incompatible with our values. AI coding > assistants aren't free software, and they cannot be free software. They can be > OSI-licensed frontends to a proprietary online service that cannot be > replicated even if the source code to all the server side components was > published. We have established elsewhere in this thread that an "ethically > sourced" training dataset would not be sufficient. > > Like a system that has been locked down with cryptography so only approved > binaries can be loaded, this technology is outside the user's control, and we > should not be endorsing it, even if we are only using its output.
I think this point about on-boarding is very interesting, thank you for raising it and explaining it so well. -- Sean Whitton
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