A proposal to make KDE an “AI-native” desktop has gone down like a house on fire: screams, flames, people running for safety. There may be no survivors.*
Last weekend was KDE’s annual Akademy conference and it included a presentation proposing an AI-native KDE. We noted that it seemed likely to polarize the audience. It looks like this was a considerable understatement.
In the days since, a debate over proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions descended into bans and a deleted thread. An outside campaign called for KDE to prohibit AI altogether, a GNOME developer proposed a similar policy for that project, and KDE developer Nate Graham apologized for his role in the uproar.
The Akademy talk was titled “A lovable, sovereign, AI-native KDE” and the slide deck [PDF] is now available. It ends by saying: “The question is not whether AI. It is how. You choose how much AI – and which.”
It seems almost calculated to provoke an argument rather than invite discussion. We do not know if the authors intended this – we attempted to contact both of them, but they have not yet responded.
Graham opened a discussion on Invent, KDE’s GitLab instance, about proposed restrictions on LLM-assisted contributions. Although we are not a member, we watched this with some interest over the weekend. It rapidly became heated. Moderators issued warnings, restricted further comments, and eventually removed the thread.
There is an archive of the discussion, but we warn you, it contains some highly offensive language, albeit censored by the member who quoted another member’s tweets on X. As events unfolded, the participant who drew attention to the posts was banned first. The author of the offensive material was banned later after their identity was verified.
The discussion is gone, but the argument continues.
One response was an outside initiative called KDE for People, which called on the KDE project to adopt a No-AI policy. Around 250 people signed it before its organizers closed it to further signatures.
GNOME developer Jordan Petridis has also published The GNOME LLM Policy That I Want, proposing that LLMs be barred from creating or modifying anything submitted to GNOME or hosted on its infrastructure.
This mentions the recent ballot on AI usage in Debian. We reported on the developer referendum about a month ago, noting that the broad spread of anti-AI options in the ballot was likely to split the vote. (This likelihood was dismissed in the comments.) Well, as The Register’s Asia-Pacific desk reported a few days later, Debian did not ban AI contributions.
Graham subsequently explained his involvement in a post titled KDE and AI, and you, and me. He opens by saying: “So I accidentally triggered an online shitstorm in the process of trying to craft a set of more restrictive LLM usage guidelines for KDE. Sorry about that.”
He notes that the Akademy talk met “what I’m told was a fairly chilly reception” and that “the next day, a workshop was held about the topic, also receiving a chilly reception.”
Every couple of years, the KDE project sets three goals for the next two years. Earlier this week, after Akademy, it chose its latest three: you can see them in the last column of the goal-setting Kanban board. The ones chosen are:
KDE for Enterprise and Deployments (Issue #5)
Better documentation (Issue #2)
Next Generation Styling for KDE (Issue #3)
We see no mention of AI in there. In context, that may come as a relief to parts of the community.
Bootnote
*A tip of the black Borsalino to the late great Terry Pratchett, for two different “house on fire” references we combined. ®
At times I’m starting to feel like there’s some sort of AI-derangement syndrome starting to take a hold of people. Some dude proposed a AI-dekstop thing (as a joke or a provocation, I feel like), everyone reacted to that proposal with a “what? lol, no.” then some media reports “KDE wants to turn into a AI-desktop!”, someone posts that to Lemmy (not this thread, a earlier one from a few days ago) and people lose their fucking minds, start talking about dropping KDE, going to FreeBSD and other silliness. Then for a few days these articles keep dropping, people keep getting upset.
Meanwhile, what is the official KDE stance? Seems to be pretty reasonable to me. I don’t know if the media needs to be less clickbaity and not pick up any stupid proposal by a random person, or should the people reading the media do a little it of more digging than just reacting to the headline. Probably a bit of both. But this whole thing is getting seriously silly. At this point you cant really discuss AI in any meaningful manner, at least not on Lemmy, because of the knee jerk reactions and extreme opinions.
Whats even more sad is that I feel like I need to add a disclaimer that I am not pro-AI, even though I don’t think I voiced an opinion on it, in the main part of my stupid rant. I feel like I need to add it, because if I don’t some people will just ignore what I’m saying and start going on at me about how AI bad and I should feel bad. Or something.
Anyway, if you read all that, I’m sorry to have wasted your time.
The Linux Experiment - No, KDE isn’t turning into an AI desktop: https://youtu.be/Pkgvc7jwxwU
The way people on Lemmy just assume and act on those assumptions is embarrassing.
Good thing is that it leads me to using social media less because this people are insufferable.
Haha, thats a positive way of looking at it.
Now that you mentioned it, I think I’ve also started using social media less and less because of the extreme extremism that is going about. If you have a opinion that is not in one extreme or the other, you’ll get a bollocking from all sides.
Luckily I found a nice IRC network with nice people who are able to discuss things. Been spending my days there instead of doomscrolling Lemmy or reddit.