Whenever AI is mentioned lots of people in the Linux space immediately react negatively. Creators like TheLinuxExperiment on YouTube always feel the need to add a disclaimer that “some people think AI is problematic” or something along those lines if an AI topic is discussed. I get that AI has many problems but at the same time the potential it has is immense, especially as an assistant on personal computers (just look at what “Apple Intelligence” seems to be capable of.) Gnome and other desktops need to start working on integrating FOSS AI models so that we don’t become obsolete. Using an AI-less desktop may be akin to hand copying books after the printing press revolution. If you think of specific problems it is better to point them out and try think of solutions, not reject the technology as a whole.
TLDR: A lot of ludite sentiments around AI in Linux community.
I won’t rehash the arguments around “AI” that others are best placed to make.
My main issue is AI as a term is basically a marketing one to convince people that these tools do something they don’t and its causing real harm. Its redirecting resources and attention onto a very narrow subset of tools replacing other less intensive tools. There are significant impacts to these tools (during an existential crisis around our use and consumption of energy). There are some really good targeted uses of machine learning techniques but they are being drowned out by a hype train that is determined to make the general public think that we have or are near Data from Star Trek.
Addtionally, as others have said the current state of “AI” has a very anti FOSS ethos. With big firms using and misusing their monopolies to steal, borrow and coopt data that isn’t theirs to build something that contains that’s data but is their copyright. Some of this data is intensely personal and sensitive and the original intent behind the sharing is not for training a model which may in certain circumstances spit out that data verbatim.
Lastly, since you use the term Luddite. Its worth actually engaging with what that movement was about. Whilst its pitched now as generic anti-technology backlash in fact it was a movement of people who saw what the priorities and choices in the new technology meant for them: the people that didn’t own the technology and would get worse living and work conditions as a result. As it turned out they were almost exactly correct in thier predictions. They are indeed worth thinking about as allegory for the moment we find ourselves in. How do ordinary people want this technology to change our lives? Who do we want to control it? Given its implications for our climate needs can we afford to use it now, if so for what purposes?
Personally, I can’t wait for the hype train to pop (or maybe depart?) so we can get back to rational discussions about the best uses of machine learning (and computing in general) for the betterment of all rather than the enrichment of a few.
It’s a surprisingly good comparison especially when you look at the reactions: frame breaking vs data poisoning.
The problem isn’t progress, the problem is that some of us disagree with the Idea that what’s being touted is actual progress. The things llms are actually good at they’ve being doing for years (language translations) the rest of it is so inexact it can’t be trusted.
I can’t trust any llm generated code because it lies about what it’s doing, so I need to verify everything it generates anyway in which case it’s easier to write it myself. I keep trying it and it looks impressive until it ends up at a way worse version of something I could have already written.
I assume that it’s the same way with everything I’m not an expert in. In which case it’s worse than useless to me, I can’t trust anything it says.
The only thing I can use it for is to tell me things I already know and that basically makes it a toy or a game.
That’s not even getting into the security implications of giving shitty software access to all your sensitive data etc.
If you are so keen on correctness, please don’t say “LLMs are lying”. Lying is a conscious action of deceiving. LLMs are not capable of that. That’s exactly the problem: they don’t think, they just assemble with probability. If they could lie, they could also produce real answers.
Right, another aspect of the Luddite movement is that they lost. They failed to stop the spread of industrialization and machinery in factories.
Screaming at a train moving 200kmph hoping it will stop.
But that doesn’t mean pushback is doomed to fail this time. “It happened once, therefore it follows that it will happen again” is confirmation bias.
Also, it’s not just screaming at a train. There’s actual litigation right now (and potential litigation) from some big names to reign in the capitalists exploiting the lack of regulation in LLMs. Each is not necessarily for a “luddite” purpose, but collectively, the results may effectively achieve the same thing.
“It happened once, therefore it follows that it will happen again” is confirmation bias
You’re right but realistically it will fail. The voices speaking against it are few and largely marginalised, with no money or power. There will probably be regulations but it will not go away.
Right, but like I said, there’s several lawsuits (and threatened lawsuits) right now that might achieve the same goals of those speaking against how it’s currently used.
I don’t think anyone here is arguing for LLMs to go away completely, they just want to be compensated fairly for their work (else, restrict the use of said work).
All we have are words or violence.
You misunderstand the Luddite movement. They weren’t anti-technology, they were anti-capitalist exploitation.
The 1810s: The Luddites act against destitution
It is fashionable to stigmatise the Luddites as mindless blockers of progress. But they were motivated by an innate sense of self-preservation, rather than a fear of change. The prospect of poverty and hunger spurred them on. Their aim was to make an employer (or set of employers) come to terms in a situation where unions were illegal.
They probably wouldn’t be such a laughing stock if they were successful.
So, lick the boot instead of resisting you say?
Work on useful alternatives to big corpo crapware = lick the boot?
Mkay…
It was more in response to your comments. I don’t think anyone has a problem with useful FOSS alternatives per se.
I’ve never heard anyone explicitly say this but I’m sure a lot of people (i.e. management) think that AI is a replacement for static code. If you have a component with constantly changing requirements then it can make sense, but don’t ask an llm to perform a process that’s done every single day in the exact same way. Chief among my AI concerns is the amount of energy it uses. It feels like we could mostly wean off of carbon emitting fuels in 50 years but if energy demand skyrockets will be pushing those dates back by decades.
My concern with AI is also with its energy usage. There’s a reason OpenAI has tons of datacenters, yet people think it does not take much because “free”!
free software communities
TheLinuxExperiment on YouTube
LOL
deleted by creator
Time 💫 will ✨ prove 💫 you ✨ wrong. 💫
deleted by creator
Changing the brightness or WiFi settings can be very useful for many people. Not everyone is a Linux nerd and knows all the ins and outs of basic computing.
deleted by creator
I agree. However, I think it is related to Capitalism and all the sociopathic corporations out there. It’s almost impossible to think that anything good will come from the Blue Church controlling even more tech. Capitalism have always used any opportunity to enslave/extort people - that continues with AI under their control.
However, I was also disappointed when I found out how negative ‘my’ crowd were. I wanted to create an open source lowend AGI to secure poor people a descent life without being attacked by Capitalism every day/hour/second, create abundance, communities, production and and in general help build a social sub society in the midst of the insane blue church and their propagandized believers.
It is perfectly doable to fight the Capitalist religion with homegrown AI based on what we know and have today. But nobody can do it alone, and if there’s no-one willing to fight the f*ckers with AI, then it takes time…
I definitely intend to build a revolution-AGI to kill off the Capitalist religion and save exploited poor people. No matter what happens, there will be at least one AGI that are trained on revolution, anti-capitalism and building something much better than this effing blue nightmare. The worlds first aggressive ‘Commie-bot’ ha! 😍
As someone whose employer is strongly pushing them to use AI assistants in coding: no. At best, it’s like being tied to a shitty intern that copies code off stack overflow and then blows me up on slack when it magically doesn’t work. I still don’t understand why everyone is so excited about them. The only tasks they can handle competently are tasks I can easily do on my own (and with a lot less re-typing.)
Sure, they’ll grow over the years, but Altman et al are complaining that they’re running out of training data. And even with an unlimited body of training data for future models, we’ll still end up with something about as intelligent as a kid that’s been locked in a windowless room with books their whole life and can either parrot opinions they’ve read or make shit up and hope you believe it. I’ll think we’ll get a series of incompetent products with increasing ability to make wrong shit up on the fly until C-suite moves on to the next shiny bullshit.
That’s not to say we’re not capable of creating a generally-intelligent system on par with or exceeding human intelligence, but I really don’t think LLMs will allow for that.
tl;dr: a lot of woo in the tech community that the linux community isn’t as on board with
You’re getting a lot of flack in these comments, but you are absolutely right. All the concerns people have raised about “AI” and the recent wave of machine learning tech are (mostly) valid, but that doesn’t mean AI isn’t incredibly effective in certain use cases. Rather than hating on the technology or ignoring it, the FOSS community should try to find ways of implementing AI that mitigate the problems, while continuing to educate users about the limitations of LLMs, etc.
One comment that agrees 🥲
It’s spelled flak, not flack. It’s from the German word Flugabwehrkanone which literally means aerial defense cannon.
Oh, that’s very interesting. I knew about flak in the military context, but never realized it was the same word used in the idiom. The idiom actually makes a lot more sense now.
The first problem, as with many things AI, is nailing down just what you mean with AI.
The second problem, as with many things Linux, is the question of shipping these things with the Desktop Environment / OS by default, given that not everybody wants or needs that and for those that don’t, it’s just useless bloat.
The third problem, as with many things FOSS or AI, is transparency, here particularly training. Would I have to train the models myself? If yes: How would I acquire training data that has quantity, quality and transparent control of sources? If no: What control do I have over the source material the pre-trained model I get uses?
The fourth problem is privacy. The tradeoff for a universal assistant is universal access, which requires universal trust. Even if it can only fetch information (read files, query the web), the automated web searches could expose private data to whatever search engine or websites it uses. Particularly in the wake of Recall, the idea of saying “Oh actually we want to do the same as Microsoft” would harm Linux adoption more than it would help.
The fifth problem is control. The more control you hand to machines, the more control their developers will have. This isn’t just about trusting the machines at that point, it’s about trusting the developers. To build something the caliber of full AI assistants, you’d need a ridiculous amount of volunteer efforts, particularly due to the splintering that always comes with such projects and the friction that creates. Alternatively, you’d need corporate contributions, and they always come with an expectation of profit. Hence we’re back to trust: Do you trust a corporation big enough to make a difference to contribute to such an endeavour without amy avenue of abuse? I don’t.
Linux has survived long enough despite not keeping up with every mainstream development. In fact, what drove me to Linux was precisely that it doesn’t do everything Microsoft does. The idea of volunteers (by and large unorganised) trying to match the sheer power of a megacorp (with a strict hierarchy for who calls the shots) in development power to produce such an assistant is ridiculous enough, but the suggestion that DEs should come with it already integrated? Hell no
One useful applications of “AI” (machine learning) I could see: Evaluating logs to detect recurring errors and cross-referencing them with other logs to see if there are correlations, which might help with troubleshooting.
That doesn’t need to be an integrated desktop assistant, it can just be a regular app.Really, that applies to every possible AI tool. Make it an app, if you care enough. People can install it for themselves if they want. But for the love of the Machine God, don’t let the hype blind you to the issues.
AI may be useful in some cases (ask Mozilla) but it is not like what you said in the middle part of your post. Seeing the vote rate makes me feel a tiny bit better about this situation.
Maybe we’d be warmer towards AI if it wasn’t being used as a way for big companies to steal content from smaller creative types in order to fund valueless wealth generators.
Big surprise that a group consisting of people rather than corporations is mad about it.
Luddites were not as opposed to new technology as you say it here. They were mainly concerned about what technology would do to whom.
A helpful history right here: https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown
Thanks for the history lesson, these days it is used to refer to those opposed to industrialisation, automation, computerisation, or new technologies or even progress in general.
These days, it is often misused by ignorant people because it sounds derogatory.
FTFY
Seriously. The Luddites were mostly correct about their objections to technology being used to replace humans and making exploitation more efficient, making OP’s misuse of the terms that much funnier.
But our ignorant misconceptions are ubiquitous so they have become truth!
Imo you immensely overestimate the capabilities of these models. What they show to the public are always hand picked situations even if they say they dont
You should read up on what the luddites actually fought for. They were actually based af.
Edit: actually, read zerakith’s comment instead.
just a historical factoid that a lot of people don’t realize: the luddites weren’t anti technology without reason. they were apprehensive about new technology that threatened their livelihoods, technology that threatened them with starvation and destitution in the pursuit of profit. i think the comparison with opposition to AI is pretty apt, in many cases, honestly.
personally im fine with machine learning, what I don’t like is “AI”, a new marketing buzzword that justifies every shitty corporate exec decision and insane company evaluations.
