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 dont think the community is generally against AI, there’s plenty of FOSS projects. They just don’t like cashgrabs, enshittification and sending personal data to someone else’s computer.
sending personal data to someone else’s computer.
I think this is spot on. I think it’s exciting with LLMs but I’m not gonna give the huge corporations my data, nor anyone else for that matter.
I don’t see anyone calling for cash grabs or privacy destroying features to be added to gnome or other projects so I don’t see why that would be an issue. 🙂
On device Foss models to help you with various tasks.
You are, if you’re calling for Apple like features.
You might argue that “private cloud” is privacy preserving, but you can only implement that with the cash of Apple. I would also argue that anything leaving my machine, to a bunch of servers I don’t control, without my knowledge is NOT preserving my privacy.
On device Foss models to help you with various tasks.
Thankfully I really really don’t need an “AI” to use my desktop. I don’t want that kind of BS bloat either. But go ahead and install whatever you want on your machine.
It is quite a bloat. Llama3 7B is 4.7GB by itself, not counting all the dependencies and drivers. This can easily take 10+ GB of the drive. My Ollama setup takes about 30GB already. Given a single application (except games like COD that takes up 300GB), this is huge, almost the size of a clean OS install.
Reminder that we don’t even have AI yet, just learning machine models, which are not the same thing despite wide misuse of the term AI.
Have you mentioned that in gaming forums aswell when they talked about AI?
AI is a broad term and can mean many different things, it does not need to mean ‘true’ AI
Yes, lots of people are using this argument when reacting negatively.
Well, it’s kind of more of a fact than an argument, but do go on!
Well not at all. What a word means is not defined by what you might think. When the majority starts to use a word for something and that sticks, it can be adopted. That happens all the time and I have read articles about it many times. Even for our current predicament. Language is evolving. Meanings change. And yes ai today includes what is technically machine learning. Sorry friend, that’s how it works. Sure you can be the grumpy drunk at a bar complaining that this is not strictly ai by some definition while the rest of the world rolls their eyes and proceeds to more meaningful debates.
Words have meaning and, sure, they can be abused and change meaning over time but let’s be real here: AI is a hype term with no basis on reality. We do not have AI, we aren’t even all that close. You can make all the ad hominem comments you want but at the end of the day, the terminology comes from ignorant figureheads hyping shit up for profit (at great environmental cost too, LLM aka “AI” takes up a lot of power while yielding questionable results).
Kinda sounds like you bought into the hype, friend.
You missed the point again, oh dear! Let me try again in simpler terms : you yourself dont define words, how they are used in the public does. So if the world calls it ai, then the word will mean what everybody means when they use it.
This is how the words come to be, evolve and are at the end put in the dictionary. Nobody cares what you think. Ai today includes ML. Get over it.
Nice try with deflection attempts, but I really don’t care about them, I’m only here to teach you where words come from and to tell you, the article is written about you.
Also that I’m out of time for this. Bye.
That’s just nitpicking. Everyone here knows what we mean by AI. Yes it refers to LLMs.
Reminds me of Richard Stallman always interjecting to say “actually its gnu/Linux or as I like to say gnu plus Linux”…
Well no Mr Stallman its actually gnu + Linux + Wayland + systemd + chromium and whatever other software you have installed, are you happy now??
So when we actually do have AI, what are we supposed to call it? The current use of the term “AI” is too ambiguous to be of any use.
Nothing was ever wrong with calling them “virtual assistants” - at least with them you’re conditioned to have a low bar of expectations. So if it performs past expectations, you’ll be excited, lol.
As someone who frequently interacts with the tech illiterate, no they don’t. This sudden rush to put weighed text hallucination tables into everything isn’t that helpful. The hype feels like self driving cars or 3D TVs for those of us old enough to remember that. The potential for damage is much higher than either of those two preceding fads and cars actually killed poeple. I think many of us are expressing a healthy level of skepticism toward the people who need to sell us the next big thing and it is absolutely warranted.
It’s exactly like self driving everyone is like this is the time we are going to get AGI. But it well be like everything else overhyped and under deliver. Sure it well have its uses companies well replace people with it and they enshitificstion well continue.
The potential for damage is much higher
Doubt it. Maybe Microsoft can fuck it up somehow but the tech is here to stay and will do massive good.
You can doubt all you like but we keep seeing the training data leaking out with passwords and personal information. This problem won’t be solved by the people who created it since they don’t care and fundamentally the technology will always show that lack of care. FOSS ones may do better in this regard but they are still datasets without context. Thats the crux of the issue. The program or LLM has no context for what it says. That’s why you get these nonsensical responses telling people that killing themselves is a valid treatment for a toothache. Intelligence is understanding. The “AI” or LLM or, as I like to call them, glorified predictive textbars, doesn’t understand the words it is stringing together and most people don’t know that due to flowery marketing language and hype. The threat is real.
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.
I think the biggest problem is that ai for now is not an exact tool that gets everything right. Because that’s just not what it is built to do. Which goes against much of the philosophy of most tools you’d find on your Linux PC.
Secondly: Many people who choose Linux or other foss operating system do so, at least partially, to stay in control over their system which includes knowing why stuff happens and being able to fix stuff. Again that is just not what AI can currently deliver and it’s unlikely it will ever do that.
So I see why people just choose to ignore the whole thing all together.
I don’t like AI because it’s literally not AI. I know damn well that it is just a data scraping tool that throws a bunch of ‘probably right’ sentences or images into a proverbial blender and spits out an answer that has no actual comprehension or consistency behind it. It takes only an incredibly basic knowledge of computers and brains to know that we cannot make an actual intelligent program using the Von Neumann style of computer.
I have absolutely no interest in technology being sold to me based on a lie. And if we’re not calling this out for the lie it is, then it’s going to just keep getting pushed by people trying to make money off the concept at the stock market.
I’ve yet to see a need for “AI integration ✨” in to the desktop experience. Copilot, LLM chat bots, TTS, OCR, and translation using machine learning are all interesting but I don’t think OS integration is beneficial.
Time 💫 will ✨ prove 💫 you ✨ wrong. 💫
Tech Enthusiasts: Everything in my house is wired to the Internet of Things! I control it all from my smartphone! My smart-house is bluetooth enabled and I can give it voice commands via alexa! I love the future!
Programmers / Engineers: The most recent piece of technology I own is a printer from 2004 and I keep a loaded gun ready to shoot it if it ever makes an unexpected noise.
That doesn’t describe me or any other programmer I know.
It doesn’t describe me either, but I had nothing meaningful to contribute to the discussion.
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.
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.
