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.
The thing about tools is they do what you expect. A fork picks up food. A hammer’s head doesn’t suddenly change shape or fly off. I don’t have to worry about my shoes suddenly falling apart.
AI cannot do these things, but encourages you to use them in such a way that you don’t have to oversee the output.
It is so much more work to rewrite something that has already been written poorly. It takes more time and effort than to just rewrite it from scratch. It’s not a tool as it cannot do its job. On top of that it’s just a glorified collage machine pulling code or whatever it wants from its database and smashing it together. The code is not novel or genuine.
All of that rework and it still destroys the environment and communities wherever their data centers are housed. Loud noise and now Americans don’t have the right to clean water. They’re pissing in your yard and telling you to drink it up.
Please have a spine. Or just some pride.
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.
We usually say “the other guy”, or sometimes we say “I & AI” (a poor twst on a Rastafarian saying)
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.
If it was about real AI – not stochastic parrots – I would be all for it. What happened to those developments that started in the 70s where you have automatic formal proofs that a piece of code does what it is supposed to do? That is intelligent. Producing slop more voluminous and convoluted than humans could produce or understand is not intelligent software architecture just like fixing a hole in a roof by throwing what sticks at it is not intelligent building architecture. Both may do the job for some time. But what are the long-term costs and who is capable to clean up? In my opinion, what’s most desired is tools that are bug free, do what they should without annoying the user, and are radically simplified in their architecture. (For example, I would be happy with a perfectly working product that does what NFS or Samba aspire and fail to do for decades.) Apparently, AI can’t deliver that. To have the billionth app that is a browser wrapper and shows me exactly one website is much more important.
modern AI can be used to generate formal lean proofs:
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.
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.
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.
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.
I guess many people don’t know how much programming has changed over the last year. GrapheneOS is doing a good job telling it like it is.
… telling it like it is.
I know only one type of person that uses that phrase unironically.
