That’s very conservative.
Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
21–30 of 427 posts
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#22Interesting. Harder line than the LLVM one found at https://llvm.org/docs/DeveloperPolicy.html#ai-generated-cont...
I'm very old man shouting at clouds about this stuff. I don't want to review code the author doesn't understand and I don't want to merge code neither of us understand.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#23When will people give up this archaic practice of sending patches over emails?
Sending patches over email is basically a filter for slop. Stops the low effort drive by PRs and anyone who actually wants to invest some time in to contributing won't have a problem working out the workflow.
AI can figure out how to send a patch via email a lot faster than a human.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sounds like a good idea to ensure developers are owning the code they submit rather than hiding behind "I don't know why it does that, ChatGPT wrote it". Use AI if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell, and you can't defend the submission as your own, that's a problem.
> Use AI if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell, and you can't defend the submission as your own, that's a problem. The actual policy is "don't use AI code generators"; don't try to weasel that into "use it if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell". That's effectively "it's only cheating if you get caught". By way of analogy, Open Source projects also typically have policies…
The way I interpret it is that if you brainstorm using ChatGPT but write your own code using the ideas created in this step that would be fine, the reviewer wouldn't suspect the code of being AI generated because you've made sure it fits in with the project and actually works. The exact wording here is that they will reject changes they suspect of being AI generated, not that you can't have read anything AI generated in the process.
Getting AI to remind you of the libraries API is a fair bit different to having it generate 1000 lines of code you have hardly read before submitting.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
This could honestly break open source, with how quickly you can generate bullshit, and how long it takes to review and reject it. I can imagine more projects going the way of Android where you can download the source, but realistically you can't contribute as a random outsider.
I've always thought that the possibility of forking the project is the main benefit to open-source licensing, and we know Android can be forked.
the primary benefit of open source is freedom
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#26I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
I'm not sure which way AI would move the dial when it comes to the median submission. Humans can, and do, make some crap code.
If the problem is too many submissions, that would suggest there needs to be structures in place to manage that.
Perhaps projects receiving lage quanties of updates need triage teams. I suspect most of the submissions are done in good faith.
I can see some people choosing to avoid AI due to the possibility of legal issues. I'm doubtful of the likelihood of such problems, but some people favour eliminating all possibly over minimizing likelihood. The philosopher in me feels like people who think they have eliminated the possibility of something just haven't thought about it enough.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#27I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions
The policy is concise and well bounded. It seems to me to assert that you cannot safely assign attribution of authorship of software code that you think was generated algorithmically.
I use the term algorithmic because I think it is stronger than "AI lol". I note they use terms like AI code generator in the policy, which might be just as strong but looks to me as unlikely to becoming a useful legal term (its hardly "a man on the Clapham omnibus").
They finish with this, rather reasonable flourish:
"The policy we set now must be for today, and be open to revision. It's best to start strict and safe, then relax."
No doubt they do get a load of slop but they seem to want to close the legal angles down first and attribution seems a fair place to start off. This play book looks way better than curl's.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#28This is signed off primarily by RedHat, and they tend to be pretty serious/corporate.
I suspect their concern is not so much whether users have own the copyright to AI output but rather the risk that AI will spit out code from its training set that belongs to another project.
Most hypervisors are closed source and some are developed by litigious companies.
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#29When will people give up this archaic practice of sending patches over emails?
likely when it stops being a useful way to cut out noise
Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Use AI if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell, and you can't defend the submission as your own, that's a problem. The actual policy is "don't use AI code generators"; don't try to weasel that into "use it if you want to, but if the person on the other side can tell". That's effectively "it's only cheating if you get caught". By way of analogy, Open Source projects also typically have policies…
The way I interpret it is that if you brainstorm using ChatGPT but write your own code using the ideas created in this step that would be fine, the reviewer wouldn't suspect the code of being AI generated because you've made sure it fits in with the project and actually works. The exact wording here is that they will reject changes they suspect of being AI generated, not that you can't have read anything AI generated…
What if the code is AI generated and the developer that drove it also understands the code and can explain it?