On Thu, Aug 13, 2026 at 07:39:02AM +0200, Bas Wijnen wrote:
If we look at the effects of LLMs on the world, I'm not sure how anyone can ignore all the problems. They've been listed before, but just to repeat a few: it uses so much energy that residents near data centers asked to limit their use, otherwise the network cannot take it. Same thing for drinking water. They convince governments to subsidize the data centers, which leads to reduced services for the local population, because they don't have the money. People are using chat bots instead of talking to other people, which is resulting in less community, more isolation, and it makes some people go crazy. Every creative platform is overrun with slop.On the pro side we have "with a lot of effort (that most people are not going to put in), it is now possible to write good code a little faster" and "we can more easily find bugs".Comparing these, it is not hard to understand that when looking more globally, LLMs are a negative influence on the world.This is why I believe Debian should make a statement to the world, telling people "you are not crazy, LLMs are indeed a huge problem". Not because we personally cause all of that, but because we are experts in this field
[...]
If we look more globally at the travel problem, I think it is true that we should both limit the amount of travel (by allowing people to work from home, for example) and also to limit the modes that pollute the most (planes and cars). This is however not something that Debian has expertise on
TBH I don't see a large difference in the Debian expertise level between travel and all the things from the first quoted part like "talking to other people", "creative platform" or "drinking water".
-- WBR, wRAR
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