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Comment by alex_suzuki | Hacker News Reader

The comment for the change contains a note of bitterness:

> I have two goals in this change: To allow developers in restrictive but technically incompetent organizations to continue to use iTerm2. That is, they disallow anything that could potentially exfiltrate data, but don't have their act together enough to implement MDM. So that people who hate AI can feel at ease that no AI will happen by accident without having to dig into the weeds of the implementation.

https://gitlab.com/gnachman/iterm2/-/issues/11470#note_19176...

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Those words were definitely written through gritted teeth, but it seems to me he's being very literal. The second point in particular is exactly what the anti-AI-feature people seem to be asking for (and they are reasonable for asking for it).

AI is acting as a catalyst here to get people into flame war mode.

The issue here is the existence of a terminal feature that can send your commands to a 3rd party server.

It could have no AI whatsoever; it is reasonable to not want this in an app that you might paste secret keys into.

Do the people who don’t like this feature have the same standards for ever app they use? Probably not, they’re probably being a little hyperbolic, but it sounds like a reasonable request.

The issue here is the existence of a terminal feature that can send your commands to a 3rd party server.

With not many more characters than are needed for an API key, I could write a script in the very terminal provided by iTerm2 that sends all my commands to a 3rd party server!

> The issue here is the existence of a terminal feature that can send your commands to a 3rd party server.

That's called SSH.

> and they are reasonable for asking for it

are they? their position is basically that they don't trust iterm2 to work properly, but only in regard to this specific setting.

if you don't trust iterm2 to work, don't use it. if you do trust it to work, you should be able to trust that the ai feature that's off by default won't magically turn itself on.

I don't think the issue is lack of trust in iTerm2, it's lack of trust in the corporations who operate the AI services and have very strong (profit) incentives to abuse and/or exploit all data they can collect by any means necessary.

The technology isn't the problem; It's the meatbags weaponizing it in the name of a quick buck who are the problem.

Before this recent flare-up in pro/anti-AI tribalism, I have not regularly been demanded to justify my distrust of a corporation. Suddenly I feel I am demanded to justify my lack of faith in corporations who happen to have some involvement in AI. I shouldn't have to say anything beyond simply gesticulating vaguely in the direction of end-stage capitalism; The problems should be readily apparent.

>it's lack of trust in the corporations who operate the AI services

Then don't use the feature?

You missed my point, or I failed to adequately explain it; Please see my response to the comment above yours.

No, people are saying, don't use the feature if you're not interested. It isn't hard. Don't input an API key. Don't do multiple clicks to show the "Codecierge" toolbox. Don't type in a question for the AI. In future versions, don't install the optional AI plugin. And crucially, don't act the way people did in this saga and be civil. Follow any of that, and you're fine.

People aren't demanding you anything. You are.

You missed the point, or I failed to adequately explain it. I know full well (now, without the intentional disinformation that was being spread earlier) that the feature is entirely disabled without an API key present. I understand that, as things stand right now, the decision of whether or not to engage with OpenAI through iTerm2 is entirely mine.

My point is that I believe the reason people are still repulsed by it to such a high degree is not because they all have some irrational deep-seated hatred of the AI technology, but that they are repulsed by the idea of even accidentally engaging with the OpenAI corporation (who just announced a partnership with News Corp of all things...); They are terrified of some situation in the future where someone comes along with code or packet traces and says "Hey, look at this, OpenAI has all your data anyway, and there's nothing you can do about it but seethe and cope; sucks to be you!"

>but that they are repulsed by the idea of even accidentally engaging with the OpenAI corporation

and this is not a reasonable complaint, or a justifiable reason to demand the removal of features. if you have an emotional reaction to the existence of openAI, that's an issue for you to address yourself, not a reason to demand that other people make changes to free apps you've decided use.

Lol ignorance is now intentional disinformation

Being unable to see the technical and organizational problems with a baked-in API driven feature that many people don't want is its own form of incompetence.

I understand the frustration. But they should have just closed this issue to begin with. Waste of time.

This whole fiasco made me rethink why I am using iterm2 in the first place.

Have switched to alacritty. It’s basic but it does its job. It’s a terminal. Highly performant, no unnecessary bloat compared to iterm2.

Have moved my monthly donations away from iterm2.

I love this comment so much.

> To allow developers in restrictive but technically incompetent organizations to continue to use iTerm2

I mean sure it was a brash way of putting it but he's not wrong. I contract with an org that basically shuts off access to anything that is in any way related to AI, we can't even visit the OpenAI website on our computers. If this feature was part of core iTerm2 then 100% they would have banned the use of iTerm.

People really underestimate how much time is available to qualify whether a feature that on paper that sounds problematic is benign or functionally helpless without $XYZ other things by a security team. Saying use MDM to 'fix' it is dev time they might not have, and the only ethical thing they can do is remove the new unknown risks from their list of risks.

Much like your SLAs are not my SLAs your risks are not my risks. iterm2 inserting a mechanism to talk to a new class of component is not a minor change.

So they're going to take away MS Office, Windows, Google and Bing too are they? With iTerm it's not even using AI unless you give it an API key, so the whole thing is a storm in a teacup.

Microsoft knows its customers, and presumably provides a method for enterprises to nuke the 'AI' features. A lot of companies absolutely would not adopt an Office update with mandatory LLM.

I mean, it's true. The issue was full of people supposedly reporting that iTerm would be banned software because.... ???

I'm not sure what the matrix of organisations is that would ban a sideline feature like this through policy only, and not through technical means like MDN.

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