[gentoo-dev] Re: RFC: banning "AI"-backed (LLM/GPT/whatever) contributions to Gentoo

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Michał Górny posted on Sat, 09 Mar 2024 16:04:58 +0100 as excerpted:

> On Fri, 2024-03-08 at 03:59 +0000, Duncan wrote:
>> Robin H. Johnson posted on Tue, 5 Mar 2024 06:12:06 +0000 as excerpted:
>> 
>> > The energy waste argument is also one that needs to be made
>> > carefully:
>> 
>> Indeed.  In a Gentoo context, condemning AI for the computative energy
>> waste?  Maybe someone could argue that effectively.  That someone isn't
>> Gentoo.  Something about people living in glass houses throwing
>> stones...
> 
> Could you support that claim with actual numbers?  Particularly,
> on average energy use specifically due to use of Gentoo on machines vs.
> energy use of dedicated data centers purely for training LLMs?  I'm not
> even talking of all the energy wasted as a result of these LLMs at work.

Fair question.  Actual numbers?  No.  But...

I'm not saying don't use gentoo -- I'm a gentooer after all -- I'm saying 
gentoo simply isn't in a good position to condemn AI for its energy 
inefficiency.  In fact, I'd claim that in the Gentoo case there are 
demonstrably more energy efficient practical alternatives (can anyone 
sanely argue otherwise?, there are binary distros after all), while in the 
AI case, for some usage AI is providing practical solutions where there 
simply /weren't/ practical solutions /at/ /all/ before.  In others,  
availability and scale was practically and severely cost-limiting compared 
to the situation with AI.  At least in those cases despite high energy 
usage, AI *is* the most efficient -- arguably including energy efficient 
-- practical alternative, being the _only_ practical alternative, at least 
at scale.  Can Gentoo _ever_ be called the _only_ practical alternative, 
at scale or not?

Over all, I'd suggest that Gentoo is in as bad or worse a situation in 
terms of most energy efficient practical alternative than AI, so it simply 
can't credibly make the energy efficiency argument against AI.  Debian/
RedHat/etc, perhaps, a case could be reasonably made at least, Gentoo, no, 
not credibly.

That isn't to say that Gentoo can't credibly take an anti-AI position 
based on the /other/ points discussed in-thread.  But energy usage is just 
not an argument that can be persuasively made by Gentoo, thereby bringing 
down the credibility of the other arguments made with it that are 
otherwise viable.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman