I do agree. It’s a pretty shit tool because you can’t trust it, it makes mistakes, and you’re not in complete control of what it does.

And yeah maybe it’s more like a service when you’re using it for ready-made stuff.

I think it depends on use case and intent. Calling it a tool is perfectly valid in some cases. For others it acts more like a torment nexus.

But can a torment nexus be used as a tool? Probably, but that’s supervillian shit lol

I can see where you’re coming from. But for me, randomness in the output doesn’t affect whether i call something a tool or not.

From the Cambridge Dictionary:

Tool - something that helps you to do a particular activity.

I use LLMs to help me code at work. Maybe you can use an LLM in a different way where it’s not longer a tool but it definitely can be called a tool!

Why not? To me that’s just what the tool does.

You can chop off your arm with a chainsaw.

Tools don’t have to be safe. They don’t have to protect you from mistakes.

Why is an LLM not a tool?

But even if you configure a 3D printer properly there’s still a chance the output will be flawed.

Just because you can’t trust the output doesn’t mean it’s not a tool. If you expect it to do exactly what you want you’re using the tool wrong.

You use the LLM to help you build the system that does exactly what you want every time. LLMs are just a tool to help you get there.

Yeah completely agree with that but i don’t see how capitalism can stop open source. Capitalism runs on open source!

Of course, an LLM is a probability machine which outputs the most likely next token based on the tokens you give it.

I’m not sure why that doesn’t make it a tool though. The output of this probability machine can be useful if you know what you’re doing.

Yeah i agree with most of that but you are in control of what you do with the output. If the output is full of mistakes you don’t notice, that’s on you and you have used the tool poorly.

Blindly trusting the output of an LLM is not using the tool properly.

I just don’t know if that’s true. Yes there are vibe coded projects everywhere but most of them can be ignored. They don’t really have a bearing on the popular stable projects. Those projects will continue to be developed and as long as they don’t accept vibe commits the quality won’t go down.

I don’t know how open source could be labelled unsafe when the code is there for everyone to see. Yes Google is trying to lock down Android but that’s not an AI problem, that’s a capitalism problem.

Even then, i can’t see how corporations could kill open source. They can never stop people using their free time to develop code and releasing it under GPL.

Disagree. What would you call a 3D printer? I’d still call it a tool. Even though I don’t wield it or hold it in my hand. You tell it what you want to do and it builds something physical for you.

There is skill involved in 3D printing. Incorrect instructions lead to poor results. There are many variables to consider and you learn how to manage them the more practice you get.

What would you call a test framework? Something that can run your software tests and present information in a coherent way? I’d call it a tool. I use the testing tools available to me to speed up and improve my code.

LLMs are the same. You give it instructions and do something with the output. The difference is that the LLM can also use you as a tool. It will give you instructions and ask for results. But LLMs are not perfect. They will give you incorrect information. They will lead you down dead ends if you don’t know what you’re doing.

This makes LLMs quite difficult to use. You need knowledge in the subject you’re asking it about and you need to be skilled at using the LLM to acheive good results. A lot of people don’t have either.

You need to be strong enough to wield a chainsaw, you need to be smart enough to wield an LLM. They are both tools.

How?

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.

If there’s loads of crazy GPUs sitting around for low prices i’d bet people would create adapters for home use. Even if it can only be used for AI, we’d be in the golden age of local inference.

GPL is a response to copyright laws. If there were no copyright laws we wouldn’t need GPL.

Prohibiton doesn’t work. Regulations need to passed by government bodies not open source developers.

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.

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.

Is using AI as bad as child labour?

I don’t believe so. But i don’t believe in copyright laws either. If a developer chooses to use AI it’s their choice.

Obviously best case scenario is they use a local open weights model. I believe this will be more commonplace in a few years.

I think a skilled developer using AI to improve open source software is a case of the ends justifying the means.

Edit: the link you provided highlights the problems with large capitalist corporations owning the compute power and generic AI use by the untrained population more than the issue of skilled developers contributing to open source software.

While these things are a problem i don’t believe a distro should stop contributions just because a developer consulted an LLM.

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.

Vibe coding means giving an LLM access to the entire repository and blindly accepting the very large pull requests it makes after you tell it what you want.

That is an insane way to do development and any company who does it will suffer.

What is becoming normal is AI assisted programming. The developer retains understanding of the codebase and uses an LLM to generate small boilerplate sections because it’s quicker than writing everything by hand.

Using LLMs to write code is perfectly acceptable as long as there is a human understands exactly what the code does. Do not give agency to the AI and you’ll be fine. Let it make decisions for you and you’ll be out of the job pretty quickly.