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On Fri, 24 Oct 2025 at 22:47, Sebastian via list <list@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
These generative AI systems go against
everything which I thought the FOSS movement stood for.
Idealism vs realism, I'm afraid.
I believe that if you're commercially employed in IT today and not making use of AI, be that as a sysadmin like me, or a developer, then you are simply not competitive and won't be as productive as someone who does use them.
I am also a luddite who has never really got over the invention of the spinning jenny, but also a realist and someone who strives for efficiency.
Of course anyone can find a million examples of how AI is rubbish, and those will reinforce any anti bias. Regardless of what yours or my views on this are, AI is here and only going to get more used,
Idealism is great, but FOSS is a lot of things to a great many people, and idealists are only one faction of its supporter base. AI is contributing a lot to code audits for security and efficiency and, one day, it may even solve its own power demands.
'Artificial Intelligence is no match for Real Stidipity'.. a cliche perhaps but a truism sadly. For example a couple of weeks ago I saw an AI claim that a Mention in Dispatches - the /lowest/ award for gallantry in combat - is equivalent to a Victoria Cross - the /highest/ award for gallantry in combat. I've noticed that many companies /claiming/ to use AI /actually/ use an expert system. You all know the difference so I won't insult you by explaining it, I'll just give an example:
Amazon Customer Services. Contact them online, as I have several times, you get asked the same irrelevant questions over and over. I just keep repeating 'human' over and over until it realises it can go no further and needs to hand over to a human. It /never/ learns from the word 'human' 'OK this caller wants a human' and just asks the same fixed set of questions.
On the other hand I've seen AI /properly/ implemented on deep sea wreckage searches twice, once only yesterday. The sonar scanned the sea bed and created several terabytes of data, that would have taken a human hours to examine. The AI, learning from each search what was a hit and what wasn't, took minutes.
So, yes I agree with Simon, AI has its place, but properly implemented, /not/ just a buzzword marketing tool.
Kind regards,
Julian
-- “The great tragedy of Science — the slaying of a beautiful hypothesis by an ugly fact.” ― Thomas Henry Huxley
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