Dear all, I think the environmental statement is the weakest part of GCD008, or at least the most exaggerated. There is no denying that *current* AI deployments are energy intensive and dirty - just like coal was in the 19th century driving the industry revolution - but that is simply due to stupidity and, in part, to the early days of the success of transformers and based on the simplistic idea that bigger data centers lead to better models. This is already proving not to be true because of the flattening out of model performance. And whatever way you look at it, it is peanuts compared with other emissions. In the larger sense, CO2-wise we live in the age of crazy.
The world certainly has bigger fish to fry. Even the statement that we are running out of chips is a red herring. Either AI companies get smarter or the vendors get smarter. Any shortage will drive that. We simply have to get smarter about models. Economics will drive that and an energy crisis helps (in that way). Having 8+ competing initiatives world wide does not help either, or maybe it does :) Ludo, do you realise this may be a good thing? The AI peeps will have an incredible incentive to become more energy efficient (when the money starts running out) and that may lead to better energy technology for all of us? Good things can happen because of bad things. Huge investments, such as the terrible 2nd WW, can lead to incredible progress - including jet engines and computers ;). Even Musks' (probably stupid) idea of shooting data centers into space could be one. It is rather likely that building models will run out of steam, and inference can run on your laptop. Give it 5 years. Automating package writing in Guix is a boon for *our* projects. It *is* saving us significant time with better outputs. I get things done I could not do before, both in terms of my scientific effort and my software engineering effort. I need to use AI for my work. There is no other way (any more). We are planning a massive refactoring of GeneNetwork - we would not have considered before. There are projects in Guix we have not touched that could benefit. I would love to use true open models and create models deterministically with free software instead of the industry tooling, so we get back our transparancy and control. That is where our effort should be going. Our effort should not go to knee jerk statements about why AI is bad for us. Guix is sending the wrong message and educating people in the wrong way. What I don't like about GCD008 - and I'll say it again - is that it makes us look like dinosaurs and it splits our community. It won't be the end of Guix, but the unintended side effect is that we are keeping everything small while the world changes around us. We are part of *change* and we should make it abide by our ideas of controlling our own destiny. I don't mind a policy, per se, or even a pledge, but I do mind being made to look like an idiot. And that from someone who's ancestors where partial to famous church splits ;). You know I like free software and minimalism, but I don't like GCD008 because it is a loaded gun aimed at our own feet. Rejecting AI, in my book, is like rejecting electricity or medicine. Sure, we can do without electricity or medicine. But not many would want to. Today. Pj. On Mon, Jun 01, 2026 at 09:35:31PM +0200, Ludovic Courtès wrote: > Hi Greg and all, > > Greg Hogan <[email protected]> skribis: > > >> > One > >> > expressed concern for generative AI is over datacenter energy and > >> > water use. The Guix project currently employs multiple large compute > >> > clusters running tens of thousands of builds. > >> > >> Are you comparing ~50 GPU-less nodes worldwide (that I know of, but > >> let’s imagine there are big secret Guix build farms and the figure is > >> 1,000 nodes) to Colossus¹ & co.?… > > [...] > > > The Colossus-scale models have billions of global users. Guix has > > perhaps a few thousand? The analysis would be a speculative comparison > > of the per-capita energy use of the Guix project with and without the > > use of LLMs. > > The carbon footprint of Guix build farms (meaning the greenhouse gas > emissions to produce the hardware of those build farms and to run them) > is proportional not to the number of users but to the number of > packages. > > If Guix had a billion users, with a comparable number of packages, the > build farm size would comparable to what we have today. We would need > to use a content delivery network (CDN), for example, which adds to the > carbon budget of the infrastructure, but relatively little. > > The carbon footprint of facebook.com, with its billion users, is > certainly very high, but its infra is a toy compared to what companies > like OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic are building. The popularity rise of > Facebook or even YouTube etc. did not lead to a shortage of RAM and GPUs > on the market contrary to what we’re experiencing today. > > You may say: “with AI, I might do in 1 day what I would otherwise do in > 10 days, proof that it’s more efficient and thus reduces my carbon > footprint”. That’s not the case due to Jevon’s paradox, as Simon nicely > explained: > <https://codeberg.org/guix/guix-consensus-documents/pulls/13#issuecomment-15843803>. > > In the 2015 Paris Agreement¹, countries pledged to act to keep global > surface temperature increase below 1.5℃ compared to pre-industrial era. > To achieve that we need to significantly reduce GHG emissions (for > Western Europe where I live, we’re talking about going from ~10 TCO₂e to > 2 TCO₂e per capita—this is huge). “AI” takes us in the opposite > direction, and fast. > > > *** Why are we discussing all this in the context of Guix? *** > > The point I am trying to make in GCD 008 on this topic is that free > software doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Yes, LLMs (+ agents) can automate > away tedious packaging tasks. But we can acknowledge that the > environmental cost of these tools *alone* is a problem for society, and > we can refuse *collectively* to not make ourselves dependent on it. > > After all, we’ve been running this project without LLMs for 14 years, so > it shouldn’t be too hard, right? Yes, we have work to do to improve > package maintenance automation; luckily, we already have solid > foundations for that—more solid than most other distros. > > I emphasized “collectively” above: the GCD has never been about policing > people—as individuals, we have to make do and sometimes compromise on > what we think is “right”, from running non-free software to using LLMs; > that’s okay and explicitly acknowledged in the document. > > I hope I sufficiently clarified and contextualized what I had in mind > regarding this point. > > > *** Is the GCD about “ecology”? *** > > No it’s not. The environmental cost of “AI” is an important point IMO > but there are several more. > > The other points delve into social, ethical, and legal issues. Legal > issues have been widely discussed already, but the rest much less. > > I would invite people to take a look at these other points and the > references in the document. Summarizing it as “AI is bad” would not > only be dismissive, it would miss out on issues that affect free > software projects. > > Free software is a social endeavor with an ethical compass. Just like > some were famously critical of the non-free software running in their > printer or pacemaker and what it means for their agency, questioning how > these technologies affect us and society seems totally legit. > > > *** “My motivation is different!” *** > > That’s okay! The pledge in the document derives from my motivation. > Perhaps with a different motivation you reach similar conclusions and we > can come up with a pledge that addresses both our concerns. > > The “Motivation” section gives context, but what matters in the end is > the pledge. > > > Ludo’. > > ¹ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_Agreement > --
