Hi all,
I wanted to reply with some clarifications, since there appears to be some confusion about some of the topics.
- On the idea of a kill switch: while I said that we won’t add a “global kill switch”, all of these capabilities will be delivered as Snaps to the OS, layered on top of the existing Ubuntu stack. That means there will always be the option of removing those Snaps - which I suppose acts as a sort of kill switch for the features we’re planning on shipping.
- Opt-in vs Opt-out: my plan is to introduce AI-backed features as a “preview” on a strictly opt-in basis in 26.10. In subsequent releases, my plan is to have a step in the initial setup wizard that allows the user to choose whether or not they’d like the AI-native features enabled. Because of the size of most LLMs, we simply couldn’t ship them in the installer anyway, so opting out at first run is simple: they just won’t be there.
- On cloud providers: there appears to be some concern about “sending logs to the cloud” and such. To be clear, this will not be part of our plans. Default configurations of these tools will always be to use local inference against local models. In order to use cloud-based inference, you would need to explicitly configure that, and provide an API token or other credential
The plan here is not to force AI into every Desktop indiscriminately, but rather to enhance certain features where it makes sense (text to speech, camera focus, etc.) and make it easy for those who do want to consume AI features to do so in a way that they can trust, and that is well-integrated.
Regarding whether or not we should ship code that was co-authored by an AI - in reality we will be doing this. Even foundational projects in the ecosystem like the Kernel itself now have policies around how to govern this, and will accept tasteful, correct contributions that have been authored with AI.
I absolutely recognise that there are some tasks for which employing AI would be inappropriate. Part of the motivation for this post was indeed to highlight that we’re thinking about that, and trying to design solutions around the problems that LLMs are good at solving.
Another final point of clarification is that Ubuntu 26.04 LTS does not ship any of these features. This is all still in plan, and to be developed over the coming months as we work toward 26.10. Those who want to install these features on 26.04 LTS likely will be able to if they wish.
Happy to answer any other questions!
Jon