Mastodawn

Codeberg Announcements Aug 2, 2024

If Codeberg is trying to "compete" against GitHub and GitLab, why does it refuse to take a look at AI assistants? Apart from infringing on authors' rights and questionable output quality, we think that the current hype wave led by major companies will leave a climate disaster in its wake: https://disconnect.blog/generative-ai-is-a-climate-disaster/

Other _sustainable_ (and cheaper!) ways for increasing efficiency in software development exist: In-project communication, powerful automation pipelines and reducing boilerplate.

Generative AI is a climate disaster

Tech companies are abandoning emissions pledges to chase AI market share

Disconnect

s_levi_s Aug 3, 2024

Very weak argument imo.

How are the servers for codeberg powered?

Codeberg Announcements

@s_levi_s Codeberg is running a single server (~130W) on renewable energy. We know that we can reach more efficiency, mostly because we don't benefit from scaling effects yet.

The difference is more like this:
- we do not encourage users to use more resources, because it would cost us more. Most competitors do the opposite (e.g. recommending the use of heavy CI pipelines), simply because it makes more revenue
- we do not spend any computing power on tracking and unnecessary data collection

Codeberg Announcements Aug 3, 2024

@s_levi_s
- we do not live in a careless "enterprice" environment: We reuse failing server SSDs for our private use, we know that others regularly replace just as a precaution
- we do not spend excess resources on high availability, due to a simple 80/20 rule: 80% gain with 20% effort. We know we could add more spare servers, more sophisticated backups, replace hardware more often to avoid potential failures ... but we don't. It's a waste of resources (incl. our donations).

~f

s_levi_s Aug 4, 2024

@Codeberg
So the main difference is your claim to operate more energy efficient and waste less resources?

You are still using resources... what is than the problem with an AI assistant created following your standards?

Codeberg Announcements Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s Our original argument was that we should improve society somewhat. Yet we participate in it, however, that does not contradict what we say, even if we were not doing all of these things.

The problem with what you mentioned is that it is completely hypothetical (the article explains it), similarly to cryptocurrencies! And that even if it wasn't: Wasting hardware and AI scraping the entire Internet (not all of which is powered by renewable energy) 100 times is much less sustainable. ^n

s_levi_s Aug 4, 2024

Well, than I could just argue that Codeberg is wasting hardware, and that the benefits for society are marginal compared to AI. Cost/reward. Codeberg is only a very small improvement to society.

That is also the difference to crypto imo... AI actually has use cases.

n0toose Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s @Codeberg I mean, I could also pull an argument and say that you can buy drugs with cryptocurrency and that this in itself is a use case that is much more useful than GitHub Copilot (not a serious argument), but I don't feel like playing the devil's advocate and arguing around in circles anymore...

This isn't going anywhere, so I might as well say that we can agree to disagree.

s_levi_s Aug 5, 2024

@n0toose Umm, who are you? Okay, we agree to disagree :D

NeatNit Aug 5, 2024

@n0toose great job keeping your cool, I think I would have cracked and been a lot meaner 🙂

Jan Wildeboer 😷

@s_levi_s Every little step counts, IMHO. I for one am very happy that I found @Codeberg a while ago and was able to move almost all of my Github presence over to a service that actually cares about the values I prefer (open source, transparency, non-profit, filled with smart and nice people).

Frank Aug 4, 2024

@jwildeboer
This. 👆

@s_levi_s @Codeberg

s_levi_s Aug 5, 2024

@jwildeboer @Codeberg

Yes, every little step counts, I think it is a good thing that Codeberg exists.

I just think AI is a bigger step.

xyhhx 🔻Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s several things you're saying don't make any sense:

- you can't claim they're wasting hardware by ... not replacing hardware early, and reusing the hardware they *do* replace..? there's simply no room for that argument

- as for energy, the argument is twofold: energy isn't produced infinitely nor for free. even if codeberg uses renewables solely, ai would use energy and money to achieve this, and that's speaking only on the usage of existing models

xyhhx 🔻Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s the fact is if they chose to add ai features, they'd probably have to use models that were trained by others who probably agree with you that the energy usage isn't important or at least is worth it. that energy is likely not coming from renewables, and is even sometimes being bought at the expense of humans

xyhhx 🔻Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s those models are trained on datasets that are created by scraping the whole of the internet, and many website admins report 50%-70% drop in traffic when blocking them.

the armies of scrapers, the load on the servers they scrape, the data pipelines to prepare this tremendous amount of data, training models on them - all of this is *actively* using huge amounts of energy

xyhhx 🔻Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s estimates peg datacnter emissions at being responsible for 1%-4% of global emissions with that number expected to double or triple in 10 years. some places are estimating 5 times increase!

so no it's not just about whether codeberg's own severs are powered by renewables or not, and providing services that decidedly do not rely on or offer ai features enable those who are afraid of the impending climate collapse a means to sleep better at night by not contributing

s_levi_s Aug 5, 2024

@xyhhx @Codeberg

My argument is that by existing Codeberg is using up hardware and energy. There is no way around it, even if they use renewables and reuses their old hardware.

It is just on a smaller scale.

Based on this, one has to look at the rewards of the energy usage to decide if it is worth it to run Codeberg or train AI, no?

xyhhx 🔻Aug 5, 2024

@s_levi_s if that's your only takeaway from the energy portion you're just not paying attention

and while it may be hard for you to hear given your area of study, i don't have any hope for ai in this regard and i'd bet many codeberg users agree

s_levi_s Aug 5, 2024

@xyhhx @Codeberg

Now, let's try to not get personal, just because someone does not share your opinion on AI, okay?

Well, we could ask the average codeberg user or software developer, what they value more: AI or Codeberg... Seems like I would bet against you

xyhhx 🔻Aug 5, 2024

@s_levi_s i seriously doubt the average codeberg user wants ai features

sotolf Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s @Codeberg ai has shown no value to society so far, codeberg has.

malte Aug 4, 2024

@s_levi_s sure you have use-cases, but i'm sure that you, being an AI, have read about humans sometimes crave to be liked by *every* other human being, and that that is impossible, and probably even unnecessary. so i'm sure you can learn that the same might be true for you! not everyone *needs* an AI! some people have made bad experiences with AI and are sceptical, others enjoy thinking by themselves. and i think that's ok. i hope your coefficients are developing healthily!

Alexandre Dulaunoy Aug 5, 2024

@s_levi_s We could also argue that Codeberg is a huge value for AI as without dataset or repositories LLM won’t exist. Then the Codeberg social contribution is higher for a very small margin of energy used. @Codeberg