Comment by Kon5ole
2 days ago
Debian is conservative so it makes sense that they have proposals for not using LLM's. They'll need another year or so but I am convinced it'll soon be obvious that any "no LLM" policy is untenable.
We are in the "cool new toy, let's make slop" phase, but we already see how careful use of LLM's can make high quality code faster and better than humans can do solo.
Once they are over the learning threshold, every good developer I know actually likes to use LLM's, as they allow them to realize their visions faster. If Debian has a "no LLM" policy I think they will eventually only have devs who like to type.
I should add that of course the "immoral companies burning too much energy" argument has actual merit, no matter how useful LLM's are or aren't. But I don't think Debian should die on that hill, as the only difference it will make is that we no longer have Debian.
We'll see how much people like it once the cheap subscriptions end and the actual cost of LLMs (+ profit margin) is asked of them. Although I'm suspecting that eventually, machines that are good enough to run reasonably useful models will become cheap enought that most developers will have those, but that might be some years from now.
Debian is run by volunteers, and I think Debian Developers would not like it if they would have to pay to work on it, thus there will be some aversion to (at least frontier) LLMs.