This indicates you might be in a bubble. I interact with people with a very wide range of opinions on AI and I’m not surprised by any of the proposals here.
Because it's perfect for that. Basically designed for it.
It's a tool. Like a calculator. Or a shovel.
You use it do get things done for you.
The way I see it, modern environmentalists like to pick on data centers just because it’s an easy target without entrenched lobbying. The fossil fuel industry is way worse but they have tremendous lobbying.
This is where the vegan point comes in. Do you eat meat? Congratulations, you consume 1000x more water than a dozen vegan vibecoders pumping out slop 24/7.
It’s good to be environmentally conscious, but big picture here. There are reasonable ways to reduce your water and electricity consumption. Not using AI is just not one of them. There are dozens of low hanging fruit before that. The most obvious is reducing your meat consumption. You can switch to LED bulbs if you haven’t already. Shower with warm, instead of hot, water. Buy second hand clothing or furniture. Etc.
He didn't say he was surprised by the options offered. He said he was reassured by what he considered to be the common sense option winning. As was I.
It didn't just win. Debian uses Condorcet voting, which does the equivalent of running lots of mini elections - pairing the options against each of the others in one on one contests. Close contests need a tie breaker mechanism as you get A beats B, B beats C, C beats A. Not this time - the winning option defeated all others in its one on ones.
I found that surprising. There are a few options close to option 5, the winner - only slightly less liberal. Effectively the most extreme option won, and not by a slim margin.
I, and I suspect the OP, wasn't surprised at the range of options offered. This is par for the course - Debian is a very robust democracy with its fair share of opinionated individuals. There has been a lot of noise about the LLM's. The surprising thing is what I regard as the common sense one was at one extreme, and that "extreme" position won easily.
I guess it's yet another illustration of the level of on online noise being a lousy indicator of what the normies are thinking. Yes, that's obvious, but when the level of noise is high it still can catch you by surprise.
Edit: The two most restrictive options were ranked below "None of the Above". That's the strongest rebuke a Debian GR can deliver to a proposal. Under Debians rules, if an option loses to "None of the Above" it can't win regardless of the outcome of the other mini elections. I don't think Debian could make it's position much plainer: LLM's are just another tool a developer can use at his discretion, and are to be treated no differently to any other tool.