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No, KDE isn't turning into an AI desktop (tilvids.com)
submitted 1 month ago by to c/linux@programming.dev
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Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:36 Sponsor: TuxCare

01:46 KDE's AI policy

06:42 Existing AI policies

10:06 Going further on AI

12:58 My stance on AI

17:05 FOSS projects: yes or no to AI?

28:02 Sponsor: Tuxedo Computer

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[–] 34 points 1 month ago (13 children)

I'm not talking about vendor lock-in, I'm talking about a system that has destroyed the training path for juniors, and the fact that as developers lean on AI more their skills atrophy and they become dependent on that workflow (regardless of provider), and their ability to introspect a code base decreases because they had less time learning it during the build-out phase.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago* (7 children)

    This was an issue in the computer science field well before LLMs, though (like in many areas) they did pour gas on the fire.

    TBH I think it’s more of an issue for paid software. Manpower and burnout is the bottleneck for FOSS projects, and contributions are largely thankless, hence I think amongst the people who do contribute, there will be more of an interest in truly learning the codebase.

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  • [–] 12 points 1 month ago (6 children)

    Multiple FOSS projects have been complaining over the last year or so that they are getting swamped with LLM-generate PRs that are often low-quality, but still require a similar amount of time to review. LLMs are shifting extremely lited FOSS core maintainer capacity away from development and into time-wasting code reviews with a high rejection rate.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago* (5 children)

    Well, yes, and that’s exactly what the KDE policy is addressing. They’re saying “we are going to reject vibecoded PRs, unconditionally; so don’t bother submitting them.”

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  • [–] 6 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    The biggest contributor to the backlash of the proposed policy was the additional aspect explicitly not requiring AI used in a PR to be disclosed, regardless of its quality (and which is unrelated to the ability to quickly reject obvious slop PRs).

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago (3 children)

    There was some discussion on that still. Some people wanted to avoid having AI companies basically get free advertisements in PRs.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 month ago* (2 children)

    Personally I thought that was a nonsensical argument from them, as they could've just put in the policy to declare that AI was used, but just not mention the specific one. Better yet, IMO, would've been to ban all non-self hosted AI use, which basically cuts out all the corporate AI's.

    Though even with the self hosted models available, the ethical and copyright risk remains, so I'd still have personally opted for a total ban.

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  • [–] 0 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    Well that was also discussed, the person who suggested not having an AI disclosure was against it being used for advertising, but was also open to having a general one that didn't allow the company/model. Not sure that discussion has concluded yet btw.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 month ago

    The other devs were generally against any form of disclosure, saying that they didn't want to 'shame' developers who used it.

    The discussion was locked and then removed from public view due to public backlash.

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  • [+] -12 points 1 month ago (4 children)

    The training path still exists, its just up to developers just need to take it.

    And script kiddies have always existed and contributed to OS. There has never been a "you must be this clever/qualified/awesome to contribute" bar.

    If anything, AI may actually raise the bar for some developers...

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  • [–] 14 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    If anything, AI may actually raise the bar for some developers...

    This is bar none the dumbest take I've heard about AI yet.

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  • [–] -1 points 1 month ago

    Have you read some of the absolute garbage that open source developers have put out? Not every developer is a code genius, there are some complete cowboys out there.

    AI may not make you or I better, but for some people, it definitely does make them much more capable, even if they aren't still at the level that we'd prefer.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 month ago (1 child)

    The training path still exists, its just up to developers just need to take it.

    It kind of doesn't though, if only for the fact that companies aren't hiring juniors anymore because they just put their former workloads on everyone else because AI

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  • [–] 1 point 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

    Thats a concern in the corporate world, but open source has been built on generations of enthusiasts learning as they go. If they managed to learn and develop their skills 20years ago without AI, then they can still do that today.

    My most successful project is a python and later rust project that I started long before I ever touched either language professionally.

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