Don’t get me wrong, folks, I’m not a big AI booster. I find the “de-skilling” and “increasing velocity faster than humans are capable of understanding” consequences to be particularly relevant to KDE. I believe that any usage of these tools must avoid those consequences, as they will be ruinous over the long term to careers, institutions, and products.
I think the “generative” forms of AI are especially risky on these dimensions, especially for novices, students, and junior engineers. I find all generative AI “art” to be awful and off-putting; just terrible stuff.
I’m also upset about resource usage. While yes, it has gotten more efficient over time, Jevons’ paradox means the efficiency gains will be gobbled up by increased usage. And the world does not have nearly enough carbon-free electricity generation sources coming online to render this irrelevant.
And in principle, I feel very sad about the mass theft of creators’ work, though it conjures mixed feelings because I’ve never been much of a believer in copyright and patents to begin with, and I don’t think these legal tools were ever effective in protecting creators. But clearly this level of harm is beyond the pale. And even more depressing is that it’s considered a done deal! No court on earth is going to declare it all illegal and shut down (ostensibly) the biggest drivers of their economies’ GDP growth, their companies’ productivity, and their militaries’ lethality. Depressing? Yes. But true? You know it is. Even the fig leaf of copyright protecting “the little guy” is a dead man walking.
I could go on. So yes, I hate it too!
But the thing is, it’s easy to take a performative stand against all of this online. It’s harder to actually take actions that navigate a flawed and unstable world in a way that balances your moral compass against your relevance and effectiveness.
I don’t want to be a dinosaur in my 50s, pushed out of my career path and forced to start over from scratch in a different field a decade and a half away from retirement. And I don’t want for my actions to produce this outcome for any of my employees.
Now, I don’t blame anyone who makes the choice to drop out. The tech industry is certainly a depressing place right now. But I’m not ready to; I still think KDE can be a light in the darkness, and I want to be a part of helping it continue to shine.
And on the subject of KDE, I don’t want it to fall behind. Like it or not, a single highly-skilled engineer could probably take a few months to supervise Claude or Codex to build a better version of most KDE software that took 20 years to reach its current state. And if they do? En masse? Then KDE itself falls into irrelevance not because it’s bad, but because it’s been outcompeted by newcomers — even FOSS newcomers less allergic to AI. Their output might not be sustainable over the long-term, but no users care about that, and the damage will be done. Everyone is being habituated to throwaway content these days. Perhaps even including throwaway software. “Can’t maintain it? ehh, just vibe-code a new one in a few years, when presumably the models will be even better!”
This is very depressing, but to me, the only nightmare worse than KDE accepting a bunch of unmaintainable vibe-coded junk, is that we get outcompeted by same. I think I would cry, and I think it’s a real risk.
This is why I don’t think it’s wise for us to blanket-ban all or most AI-related contributions. I would like to see KDE use some of these tools strategically and defensively, where they make sense, to prevent ourselves from losing competitiveness when we’re right on the cusp of bursting into the mainstream.
In particular, I think AI code review could make sense for KDE. We’re always critically low on code review resources; nobody enjoys doing it. AI can be quite good at pointing out obvious mistakes and small but subtle bugs. And in the cases where it makes obviously stupid suggestions, we can all just laugh and click the “Resolve” button on the thread. We can also, by reading the good-quality suggestions, become better engineers ourselves. And those skills will remain with us when the AI bubble bursts and tokens become 5x more expensive and the “free for FOSS projects” deals become “talk to sales about a competitive package”.
AI-assisted bug triage is another potential field that might be able to benefit. Nobody enjoys doing this, and I think AI could at least take some of the edge off by fixing wrong versions, re-categorizing mis-filed tickets, asking reporters to clean up junk reports and attach backtraces, and so on. Nobody actually likes this part of bug triage (to the extent anyone likes any of it at all).
Would this entail a certain amount of moral compromise on various fronts? Yes. But let’s get real: everything in life is a moral compromise, and you’re fooling yourself if you think you didn’t already make a bunch of them.
Did you fly on any planes in the last few years? You morally compromised your environmental ideals. Do you drive a gas-powered car, or ride on any gas-powered public transit? You did it again. Do you own a home with a south-facing roof and haven’t put enough solar PV on it to make it net-zero? Ditto. Do you have any appliances powered by natural gas? Do you still eat meat? Do you ever throw away food that rotted because you misjudged how much you needed during the last grocery store run? Do you buy food in that grocery store that’s wrapped in plastic? Is there any polyester or nylon in the clothes you wear? Do you shower every day? Do you have an Amazon Prime subscription and order new products for two-day delivery? Do you use ad-blocking browser extensions? Do you listen to music on Spotify or YouTube instead of buying albums on Bandcamp? Do you watch clips of shows on YouTube instead of subscribing to their streaming services? Do you pirate content? Do you check books out of the library for free or buy them used instead of buying them new? Do you buy computers and computer components new? Do you buy junk plastic-and-particleboard Ikea furniture instead of real stuff made of wood? Do you repair everything you own that breaks instead of throwing it out and buying a new one? Do you always buy local, instead of from China? Do you really buy only things you actually need? Do you pay people to do things you could learn and do yourself? What percentage of your income to you donate to charity, anyway? Do you take every opportunity to protest injustice, or do you sometimes get tired and play video games instead? And speaking of injustice, how much of your tax revenue funds harmful things around the world? You’re culpable, you know!
We can play this game forever. I don’t find that it’s very useful to excommunicate one another over abstract moral compromises involving participation in world-spanning systems with negative externalities.
We’re all guilty in one way or another, having already made the compromises we were comfortable with. To me it feels hypocritical to say “well my system-participation-related moral compromises were minor and necessary; yours are huge and unacceptable!”
If we’re natural allies (e.g. FOSS people, KDE people), I propose that we give one another a break and treat one other as the allies we are rather than firing up the inquisition. Life is hard, and morally righteous people are already on the side of “help, don’t hurt” even if they can’t be 100% perfect. We’re all doing the best we can. I trust my fellow KDE people to at least try their best to navigate this crazy messed-up world and wrestle with how much or how little AI they want to allow into their lives and professional workflows. That’s why I don’t favor a one-size-fits-all sledgehammer policy on the topic.
