GrapheneOS is currently defending its use of AI coding tools on Mastodon against complaints by various accounts claiming to be users.
We do not understand where you’re coming from or why you’re so incredibly angry with us. It’s not justified and does not make sense.
I’d argue that this news is over-blown. The project has more than a solid and honorable track record with insanely talented engineers behind it. AI is a new technology that is not going anywhere. I would put my faith into their decisions to improve this project by whatever means they think are best.
The truth is most commenters are not technically skilled to evaluate or critique their decisions. If GOS team, who again would be at the top % in the field, feel that this can elevate the project, should we not give them the benefit of the doubt?
A bit unrelated, but I wonder if I’m the only one left that is:
- Using small, open-weight models
- Asking it to only write small snippets that I can easily go through, check and understand.
- Copying pasting from good old web frontends instead of integrating it into my editor or whatever else people do with agents nowadays.
I feel like when we’re talking about AI this sort of usage gets lumped into the same pile as agentic vibe coding and it’s not helpful for discussion. Surely most people wouldn’t find this problematic?
Probably.
My company is currently pushing “loop engineering” on us… They are in love with Claude and keeps referring to it as “him”. Very proudly announce that “I set ut a loop, and he closed 40 PRs while I slept!” (without review, of course). Based on vibe written tickets as well, which contains many hallucinations.
The poor QA department (2 people) is now trying to figure out how to test all the slop.
There really is a difference between AI-assisted coding and vibe coding, and I don’t know enough about actually coding to look at their repos and tell you what’s happening.
The issue is, there’s also difference between how people cram “AI-assistance” into their previously well-refined workflows. Did see the odd person ending up with the same issues as straight-out vibe coding but without the speed, including the eventual (mild) AI psychosis and later switching to vibe coding after the chatbot convincing him.
Also I think it would be pretty trivial to generate an “understanding” of the code, yet AI boosters never bring up it as a concern.
Reading the comments, wow AI is polarizing. Neither side will budge.
I guess only time will tell, to see if all the AI code will actually come crashing down.
Sooner than later most things the average person does will sort of be vibe coded like compiling to an intermediate language. The idea of apps and walled gardens will not be as important. Instead of approved apps, it will be approved models and agents. Even the idea of an operating system is going to change. Linux is a great space for integrating the computing environment with AI coding. The full source is available to the model and any change you ask it to make can just be done for you. The idea of running a “Linux” or “Windows” could be limited to certain software and domains.
If they’re just using it to find and patch bugs/exploits? Fine by me.
Vibe coding? Get the fuck outta here.
This is the key point.
From my reading that is not the limit in how they are using AI. It seems like they are accepting LLM generated code as inputs.
This pretty much compromises the whole project as far as I am concerned.
Based on my understanding, the “core” team uses AI to detect vulnerabilities.
They also take codes from paid third party devs, and they say they don’t mind how they wrote the code, but it must be clear and each contributor needs to be able to explain it.
They follow the same rules on code conventions including readability. So basically, it’s less that they accept it than they don’t care as long as it matches their quality expectations. If you can’t tell, you can’t ban…
Considering Graphene’s entire reputation is staked on extremely precise definitions of security, this is a little concerning.
They’re the best. If the best degrades, I don’t foresee some Graphene alternative stepping up very quickly (see also: cross-platform alternatives to Google-made Chromium and Google-funded Gecko)
is the linux kernel “the best”? because they are using AI tooling. Linus actually threatened to use LLM to maintain sparse if nobody stepped up…
is curl the best? because the creator of curl has also used/accepted LLM code…
if the creators of two of “the best” pieces of software ever made are accepting (NOT embracing or promoting… just accepting) LLM code… maybe it’s time for us to think about the possibility that this MIGHT be a useful tool instead of everyone just yelling “SLOP SLOP SLOP” everywhere…
If it’s thoroughly vetted, it might still be OK, but it’s concerning…
I am not a coder in any fashion but this is the make or break frontier for development, particularly FOSS and small scale projects.
AI is evil.
It is an ecological nightmare, socially and economically distructive, prompted on the theft of the knowledge and work of every creative endeavour any person as ever made and pointed at rendering pointless any future aspiration of individual creation someone may have.
The association has been made and it is not going away.
this is such an extremist position, i don’t know how anyone can take it seriously
Thank you.
AI in concept is not evil and could be a good thing .
Unfortunately, its implementation has been at the hands of rapacious, avaricious, and narcissistic über-capitalists, which has inextricably linked AI with the evils you enumerated.
In a different timeline, AI was developed slowly, using heavily-vetted and legally obtained data, and rolled out in an intelligent and safe way.
We are better off leaving the appeal to alternate time lines for another conversation, preferably around science fiction or comics.
As it exists, as it was created, “AI” is evil. It consumes resources we can’t afford to waste and is currently supercharging our pollution indexes and creating what may be a catastrophic collapse of already very fragile and unbalanced social and economic realities.
And because we are already into the sunken cost falacy fase, it will never be rewritten or rebuilt. Hopefully, it will collapse in such horrifying way it will create a cautionary tale, but we are not so lucky, so what we are left with is picking up the bits after it.
This kind of system had to be developed inside laboratories, colleges, universities, research centers, to aid into very niche and specific fields of research, not made to be a mass consumption comodity as it is. But it was, as you very well put it, not done that way.
AI is not evil. It doesn’t have a consciousness. It doesn’t make decisions.
What is evil, are billionaire capitalists having full control over the technology.
What is evil, is the concept of closed-source.
What is evil, is stealing all creative works without attribution or compensation.
What is evil, is seizing essentially all the silicon to build these datacenters, then soak up all the electricity out of the grid and all the water out of the ground.
The problem isn’t the AI, itself. It’s the means that’s the problem…not the ends.
To summarize: something that is being created through highly destructive amd predatory means, by completely deranged people, is not evil.
I can’t disagree more. And to quote myself, again, today:
As it exists, as it was created, “AI” is evil. It consumes resources we can’t afford to waste and is currently supercharging our pollution indexes and creating what may be a catastrophic collapse of already very fragile and unbalanced social and economic realities. And because we are already into the sunken cost falacy fase, it will never be rewritten or rebuilt. Hopefully, it will collapse in such horrifying way it will create a cautionary tale, but we are not so lucky, so what we are left with is picking up the bits after it. This kind of system had to be developed inside laboratories, colleges, universities, research centers, to aid into very niche and specific fields of research, not made to be a mass consumption comodity as it is. But it was, unfortunately, not done that way.
“Ai” isn’t inherently evil. It’s just a tool. An incredibly interesting and marvelous tool, in theory.
What we make of it and how we use it matters. Noone needs stupid chatbots. People should only be allowed to use them after graduating an exam of what they actually are and how they work. In the current state they’re 90% bullshit and harmful.
But LLMs surely have great and reasonable applications. People often fear what they don’t really understand. And LLMs really are a topic that often even “techies” don’t get, so why should a layman.
Yes, they are environmental Desasters. But try to substract all the trillions of silly nonsensical queries millions of people hammer into chatbots, that once were simple search-engine - queries. And it’s not THAT bad anymore.
“AI is just a tool” - #1 thing said by tools.
“AI is just a tool” - #1 thing said by tools.
#1 thing said by arrogant turds with no clue.
My point proven :D
If that fills your clueless heart with joy, be my guest 🤷🏻
I’m just going to quote myself, as I’m satisfied enough with the answer I wrote to another reply.
As it exists, as it was created, “AI” is evil. It consumes resources we can’t afford to waste and is currently supercharging our pollution indexes and creating what may be a catastrophic collapse of already very fragile and unbalanced social and economic realities. And because we are already into the sunken cost falacy fase, it will never be rewritten or rebuilt. Hopefully, it will collapse in such horrifying way it will create a cautionary tale, but we are not so lucky, so what we are left with is picking up the bits after it. This kind of system had to be developed inside laboratories, colleges, universities, research centers, to aid into very niche and specific fields of research, not made to be a mass consumption comodity as it is. But it was, unfortunately, not done that way.
“I’m just going to quote myself”
Yeah go on buddy, doesn’t make you right though.
AI is an item (as “tool” seems to trigger you people), saying it is “evil” is just stupid and makes you sound like an evangelist lol.
Is it bad? That is something people can actually discuss, but you’re not here for that it seems.
The AI is a consummer of resources we can not easily dispense that returns nothing of objective and equivalent value.
Fresh words, no quotes.
More palatable now?
Oh no we didn’t know that!! /s
Dude, we know the downsides of generative AI and the training of llms.
Is that so hard to understand?
It is. It really is. At any point on any other endeavour, someone said it was enough and the costs did not justify the results. Not with this. So, it really is hard to understand.
Just because it was a nicely worded statement, doesn’t make it universal.
I use a local LLM for our smart home. It wastes a Lil bit of energy, which is still faaaar below my 1500W while gaming. Is gaming evil now? It helps dramatically in ways that were never possible before like “turn on all lights at 40% in the color purple and also turn on music. My fav playlist” followed by a “no, use a warm color and close all windows”.
Not every LLM is a fucking chatbot that eats the planet to “create” a shitty cat-meme for Granny’s Facebook.
Don’t assume everyone uses silly chatbots. That is ONE application of LLMs, and it is indeed stupid and kills out environment for basically no benefit.
Congratulations. Enjoy it.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS Here you go, argue with GrapheneOS - it’s an open platform, go ahead and make a masto account and share your thoughts with them. Tell them what you think! The rep who handles their masto account is very well spoken and presents rebuttals of value so I advise you bring your A game.
The rep who handles their masto account is very well spoken and presents rebuttals of value so I advise you bring your A game.
Yeaaaah like deleting their earlier posts to make themselves look better and claiming the “haters” are coming from K*wi Farms.
https://mas.to/@zzt/117246306723269935
Truly good rebuttals right here!
I’m not going to approach them in any fashion. I have already made my decision about their work/product and the GrapheneOS is not of my interest.
The project must have their reasons but I still insist on what I’ve stated regarding AI in general.
You’re right, but don’t encourage people to brigade GrapheneOS. That’s a donation-funded project.
I’m not brigading anyone. They have their reasons, I have my view regarding AI, that is it. I did not attack the GrapheneOS team in any way nor do I intend to.
My bad, I didn’t think of that. My only thought was “$20 says this chucklehead won’t do squat” because we know.
I don’t like GOS devs, they are not focused on usablity, but on security (which is completely valid, but it’s a shame that GOS is the most usable mobile OS), but holy based.
If you are disputing AI utility in coding: Recent Linux kernel versions fixed up to 3 times more CVEs in comparision to releases before AI. Also, much less of those CVEs are found in the newer versions, which means new kernel releases contain better code.
I think the gist here is making a distinction between AI coding and AI auditing.
To the best of my knowledge, AI coding is still significantly behind human coders in code quality and security. AI auditing, on the other hand, allows a lot of previously missed bugs to come to light, and actively helps in making code better.
People still seem to think AI is a fad that will go away. I don’t see this happening (for code) at all. Not ever
People don’t really understand this yet. There are LLMs that can do useful work running locally on 5 year old laptops (ok, only if it’s a Macbook Pro, but still). Qwen on consumer hardware isn’t close to Claude Code using cloud models, but it can do real work and this is the floor, the absolute minimum of AI we will have going forward. No matter what happens to the industry and the bubble, it will not go away. With any other outcome other than a total collapse of the bubble, AI will be more powerful than that.
good to see smart developers posting reasonable takes, though sad they have to spend time doing it
Oof. Options for good software grows smaller and smaller each day.
There is no making ai go away, it’s never going away. Now it’s a tool to divide us.
@bekkaboo@girlcock.club Linux itself is heavily using AI models.
For security analysis and uncovering bugs.
Remind me to stay away from that Nazi bar.
Defenders of genAI might as well hoist their vintage early 1940s German flags while they’re ahead! Though I suppose an Italian or Japanese flag from the same time period would also work as well.
What has AI got to do with Nazism?
For all their faults (and there are many) the GOS dev(s) are one of the good guys.
elon musk owns a company that has a few models, but if someone wants to try using the already flaky argument of “nazi bar” with something as detached as “one of them likes/funds it so everyone that uses it is a nazi” it tells you how little they think “nazi” means
Well, I conflate Nazism witg fascism and same goes with genAI. It’s already a link in mg head, ao I’m trying to stay as far away from things using genAI coding as well. Keeps me from having to remove the label of “person” from myself.
What about Mistral AI? Stable Diffusion? They Nazis too?
And ‘genAI’ - not sure what thats suposed to mean but AI use is growing fastest with the boomers and all ages are using it.
Spouting nonsense about things you clearly know little about makes you sound as backward as the MAGA morons.
- By genAI I mean generative AI, like mistral and stable diffusion.
- So yeah, I would include them the same way I would include things like craiyon or perplexity.
- As a creative, the fact that almost every genAI model in existance relies on training on copyrighted works¹ is more than enough for me to hate it. There’s a reason why even the RIAA is in a lawsuit against suno, that seemingly hasn’t been settled yet. Despite them being the devil, I would still support them before supporting genAI.
- I do not care what anyone else thinks about it. I have made it a life goal of mine to see to it that a future where genAI ( and the creatures who willingly use it ) are minimized as much as possible in society at just about any cost.
- Do I sound deranged for all this? Yes. Do I care? No.
Edit:
I am also not hearing any of the genAI companies calling out things like how grok was allowed the feature set of undressing literally anyone without consent. Most I heard was backlash from everyone else. Similar thing to that one “person” on r•ddit trying to recruit people to try and strip away the effectiveness of tools such as Glaze and Nightshade off images illegally scrapped ( or at least should have been more than illegal ) from a site made for real artists ( those who do not use genAI for their work at any point ). Haven’t seen any backlash from any of those creatures or any of the companies responsible for creating those creatures.
Consent in the realm of genAI is as real as in the realm of rapists and I will defend that view until I die.
Cool well I’ll keep using Lineage until they become massive piles of steaming crap as well.
Fuck AI and all you silicon ball lickers.
A large number of people are using it as an opportunity to promote using operating systems which are the direct opposite of hardened and are much more heavily using AI models including for a lot of code generation.
LineageOS is certainly using it. CalyxOS, /e/ and iodéOS are based on it. CalyxOS is developed by LineageOS core developers.
Oh, so now they’re also infighting like hell on “holier than thou” grounds. Cool.
Fan-fucking-tastic. Everything I love is ruined by slop users.
Since LLMs are essentially built from code, I have an easier time believing that coders can get a benefit, especially at the Individual level, within the frame of having a coding background and being able to audit, directly, the code that the machine spits out. But basically everything else happening with, and surrounding, these fucking things is atrocious.
just curious, are you planning to stop using technology altogether, once there’s nowhere else to migrate to?
I mean, I assume you have thrown away your PC already, since all 3 major OSes use AI in their development
Well, I hardly use my PC and was just forced to get one for a job to do email bullshit, so in my day to day, yes. And Ive been exploring getting a basic ass flipphone and a atlas instead of relying on googles shit GPS system, I already use OSM instead but still.
