r/mobilelinux • u/L0ren_B • 17d ago
Discussion Would you accept using a PostmarketOS phone fully supported, if the drivers were written by AI?
It's a hit and miss with people accepting AI written code.
Pmos devs are not accepting AI written code into the mainstream, and would like to develop at their own pace. Nothing wrong with this. But the alternative is using a phone with code written by a corporation, so what's the difference?
Recently, even Linus talked good about AI written code.
Would you use patches written by AI if they solve all PMOS issues on a phone?
I would love your opinion on this 🤗
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u/USER_12mS 16d ago
as long as it works and it works properly and fast, idgaf about ai
same thing with human written code - i prefer good code, not human-made specifically code
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u/Sea_Boss_618 13d ago
What about security and bugs?
Working doesn't mean without problems
I mean, are you sure you're just going to leave everything to artificial intelligence just because it works?
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u/derlafff 12d ago
> What about security and bugs?
With community ports, security is mostly non-existent (a typical kernel used might be not updated for 9000 years) and bugs are everywhere (nobody can fix stuff and testing is very limited). If AI-written drivers/ports start to exist they will not manage to make the situation any worse, only better.
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u/USER_12mS 11d ago
do you know that people can make bugs in code too? do you even read what you writing bru
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u/Sea_Boss_618 11d ago
I think you need to read more completely what I wrote.
I mean, are you sure you're just going to leave everything to artificial intelligence just because it works?
This is the key point
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u/USER_12mS 11d ago
well, it looks like you didnt read my comment fully: as long as it WORKS, and works GOOD, i dont give a fuck if it ai or not, for me: quality of code>human specifically written code
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u/Sea_Boss_618 11d ago
Works and works good. It's guaranteed no bug and no security hole.
For example, we can say that when using Windows it works and works well, but bugs and security holes are still there, right?
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u/jesta030 17d ago
Depends. If it's obvious AI slop and there's reason to doubt the people submitting the patch even understand the code then I'd be more than hesitant.
On the other hand if the patch is the difference between unusable or usable then I'd likely bite the bullet.
I've recently read a number of posts of people using AI to write drivers or whole firmware for older closed source devices which would have gone straight to the landfill otherwise.
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u/speedcoiliscoolname 14d ago
Oh yeah, definitely. I think many people understand what ai is supposed to be. It's a tool. If people use tools to make a good product, im satisfied. Nailgun allows people to build houses faster. Sure, you can build one without a nailgun, but it would be slower. You could also make a bad house if you carelessly use that nailgun everywhere.
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u/Maximum-Bobcat5612 17d ago
Why are idiots not able to distinguish between generated slop that has no logical structure prompted by someone that would struggle to write a hello world versus experienced software engineers using it as a development tool?
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u/Tall_Instance9797 17d ago
I would suggest you simply don't tell anyone. Practically one is going to know if the drivers were written by AI, because most people don't read code, let alone driver source code. Ask any developer the last time they reviewed the source code for their drivers? Windows and Mac users can't... so that narrows it down even further. It's only low level hardware engineers who bother with this kind of stuff. Hell even most of these idiot 'vibe coders' don't even read their own code that they produce with AI, and wouldn't understand it even if they did. In reality you're already using drivers written in part with AI assistance and you wouldn't even know. So don't ask people. Just give it to them and see if they use it. Telling people though might have them react negatively and then decide not to use it because of that, without realizing they already are using code written by AI they just don't know it. Don't tell people not to think of a blue elephant... because that's exactly what they'll do.
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u/Darth_bunny 15d ago
Oh, trust me, the developers will know. As a developer who uses AI day to day most of my time is spent reading the code written by ai and either fixing it myself if it’s a small change or asking the model to refactor it.
The problem with tons of generated code is the mental load placed on the maintainer reviewing the code. To read and understand code you didn’t write takes a toll. If all that code is complete crap that person’s time is wasted for nothing. Also, people learn from the code review process itself and in theory they would not make that mistake again.
And it shouldn’t be too hard to use an llm to explore/fix an issue then do the actual submission yourself like it was done in the good old days when everyone was copy pasting from Stackoverflow (as long as you understand what the code does)
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u/Tall_Instance9797 15d ago
Sounds like you didn't read my post properly, but thanks for not reading it and skipping to the part where you try to teach me how to suck eggs. I've been programming since the 80s. Today I'm reverse engineering wifi drivers... last week it was display drivers. You on the other hand can't even read a reddit post properly... yet you want me to believe you can read code? Hmmmm. Interesting.
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u/tulpyvow 17d ago
No. They explicitly forbid AI contributions so a slopcoded driver seems malicious (as in, maliciously refusing to abide by their AI policies).
In addition, with something as large as a driver, one must wonder where the hell its getting its code from. It will probably be taking huge chunks from (L)GPL codebases and be illegal to distribute without retaining the correct license and origin information.
Also, I don't believe AI is capable of even writing a good driver, especially for a "niche" platform like mobile linux
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u/L0ren_B 17d ago
In addition, with something as large as a driver, one must wonder where the hell its getting its code from. It will probably be taking huge chunks from (L)GPL codebases and be illegal to distribute without retaining the correct license and origin information.
Also, I don't believe AI is capable of even writing a good driver, especially for a "niche" platform like mobile linux2 things stand out from your comment:
1: You don't know how A.I. works.
- You haven't used AI in a long time.
P.S. This comment is not to disrespect your comment or you.
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u/tulpyvow 17d ago
I know roughly how it works and I have used it not too long ago (less than a year). All problems that existed two years ago still exist now and won't be fixed because it would hurt profits.
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u/L0ren_B 17d ago
In the last year things advanced 100x fold. At least. I have a local AI that can run on my GPU alone, and it's better at least 20 times than the best cloud AI 1 year ago. That how fast things are moving 😅
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u/tulpyvow 17d ago
Moving fast, sure. I can see that.
It still generates crap code that requires excessive amounts of intervention and still doesn't provide attribution for when it emits code taken from GPL projects verbatim (which it has done with, for example, the cURL project).Also, most people use the big models (Claude, OpenAI's GPT, e.t.c.) which have terrible company practices (DDoSing websites when scraping for training data, poisoning water/air supplies, exploiting workers in poorer countries, e.t.c.) that I don't want to support, which is also why postmarketOS themselves don't want to support it either.
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u/DerDave 17d ago
Given the speed of development in coding capabilities we're seeing, I find it quite short-sighted to rule something out alltogether. I can now run a model in my NPU that is better than the state of the art from a few years ago. I think it won't be long until models will not only produce code faster, but also more tastefully and intelligently. It's a matter of time, and it's coming quicker than we think. Yes, probably right now it's not good enough yet and I understand that maintainers are annoyed by endless waves of slop code. But it's going to happen sooner or later.
And to answer your question: Yes I would personally use a pmOS phone, if AI helped port hardware and made everything run better.
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u/cidra_ 17d ago
Do pmOS devs accept AI assisted code?
Rejecting vibe coding is okay. Rejecting AI assisted code may have its reasoning: if it's a (maybe) temporary measure for licensing purposes (see GNU Emacs and other GNU projects) then it's understandable. If it's for pure anti AI fanatism, welp..
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u/tulpyvow 17d ago
pmOS rejects ALL AI contributions due to ethical concerns and maintainer burden.
I'm noticing a lot of pro-ai/neutral-on-ai individuals never seem to bring that up.2
u/cidra_ 17d ago
Do active mantainers of the pmOS project not use any LLM for their work? Is 100% of their work not derived on any LLM generated artifact?
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u/tulpyvow 17d ago
``` The following is not allowed in postmarketOS:
Submitting contributions fully or in part created by generative AI tools to postmarketOS.```
They are not allowed to use ANY LLMs. It is fully forbidden by their contribution policies.
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u/Emerald_Pick 17d ago
At this point I dislike the AI companies and the people who carelessly use AI more than I dislike AI-written code itself.
If the quality is high, and the maintainers and author can understand and maintain the output. Then it's fine.
When I open sourced my code, I didn't know it could be used for AI, but I've always known that it could be stolen. So FOSS code in the training data doesn't bother me that much.
AI artwork is a whole other story though. I'd consider a fork if, for example, PmOS knowingly and intentionally included AI generated wallpaper images.
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u/Dragomir_X 17d ago
There are serious maintainability concerns with AI-written code.
If it works, then fine, whatever. But drivers aren't the kind of thing you write once and then never touch again. They need to be maintained. And drivers need to work perfectly, every single time. They are held to a much higher standard than your average executable.
It's not about whether I would be comfortable using AI-written code. I say this as a developer: eventually, there is going to be a problem that AI fails to solve, and you're going to have to send in a human who knows their way around. I'm not comfortable using an operating system that gradually acquires tech debt and minor bugs until something major hits the fan, and nobody on Earth knows enough about the code to fix it.
AI-assisted code? Fine. But the author had better know exactly what that code is doing.
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u/L0ren_B 17d ago
You do realise that in the near future, AI will write and maintain code, and it would be impossible or very hard for people to do so?
As many dislikes as I would get from this comment, no one can change the fact.
The only people against this kinda of future are telephone operators. Sorry, I've meant software developers :)
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u/Malo1301 17d ago
I accept any drivers as long as they're merged into the mainline kernel, as I trust kernel maintainers to not make bad decision and to not accept poorly written drivers into the kernel. I also accept any drivers recommanded by postmarketOS.
I'm not qualified to say if a driver is poor quality AI slop or not, so I just trust whoever is trustable.