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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

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Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#161
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was his point, the project full of bad developers isn't the competition. It is a peer whose skill matches yours and uses agents on top of that. By myself I am no match for myself + cline.

That’s true in the short term. Longer term it’s questionable as using AI tools heavily means you don’t remember all the details creating a new form of technical debt.

Dude, have you ever looked at code you wrote 6 months ago and gone "What was the developer thinking?" ;-)

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#162

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

If a software is truly wide open source in the sense of “do whatever the fuck you want with this code, we don’t care”, then it has nothing to fear from AI.

Open source is about sharing the source code. You generally need to force companies to share their source code derived from your project, or else companies will simply take it, modify it, and never release their changes,and charge for it too.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#163

> It's best to start strict and safe, then relax. Makes total sense. I am just wondering how do we differentiate between AI generated code and human written code that is influenced or copied from some unknown source. The same licensing problem may happen with human code as well especially for OSS where anyone can contribute. Given the current usage, I am not sure if AI generated code has an identity of its own. It’s…

> Given the current usage, I am not sure if AI generated code has an identity of its own. It’s really a tool in the hand of a human.

It’s a power saw. A really powerful tool that can be dangerous if used improperly. In that sense the code generator can have more or less of a mind of its own depending on the wielder.

Ok I think I’ve stretched the analogy to the breaking point…

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#164

Would it make sense to include the complete prompt that generated the code with the code?

You’d need to hash the model weights and save the seeds for the temperature prng as well, in order to verify the provenance. Ideally it would be reproducible, right?

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#165
post #34

This is a "BlockBuster laughs Netflix out of the room" moment. I am a huge fan of QEMU and used it throughout my career. The maintainers have every right to govern their project as they see fit. But this is a lot of mental gymnastics to justify clinging to punchcards in a world where we now have magnetic tape and keyboards to do things faster. This tech didn't spawn weeks ago. Every major project has had at least two…

2 years isn’t that long. It took the Linux kernel 10 years to start accepting code written in Rust. This isn’t quite the same as the typical frontend flavor-of-the week JavaScript library.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#166

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

This is a win for MIT license though.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#167
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that was his point, the project full of bad developers isn't the competition. It is a peer whose skill matches yours and uses agents on top of that. By myself I am no match for myself + cline.

That’s true in the short term. Longer term it’s questionable as using AI tools heavily means you don’t remember all the details creating a new form of technical debt.

I don't need to remember much, really. I have tools for that.

Really, really good tools.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#168

Oh hey, the thing I predicted in my blog titled "yes i will judge you for using AI" happened lol Basically I think open source has traditionally HEAVILY relied on hidden competency markers to judge the quality of incoming contributions. LLMs throw that entire concept on its head by presenting code that has competent markers but none of the backing experience. It is a very very jarring experience for experienced indiv…

send your blog link please

https://jaysthoughts.com/aithoughts1 Bit of a rambly rant, but the prediction stuff I was tongue in cheek referring to above is at the bottom.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#169
post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s true in the short term. Longer term it’s questionable as using AI tools heavily means you don’t remember all the details creating a new form of technical debt.

Dude, have you ever looked at code you wrote 6 months ago and gone "What was the developer thinking?" ;-)

yes, constantly. I also don't remember much contextual domain info of a given section of code about 2 weeks into delving into some other part of the same app.

So-called AI makes this worse.

Let me remind you of gyms, now that humans have been saved of much manual activity...

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#170
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

> 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. This ignores the fact that many open source projects do not have the resources to dedicate to a large number of contributions. A side effect of LLM generated code is probably…

I thought that this could be an opportunity for volunteers who can't dedicate the time to learn a codebase thoroughly enough to be a regular committer. They just have to evaluate a patch to see if it meets a threshold of quality where they can pass it on to someone who does know the codebase well.

The barrier to being able to do a first commit on any project is usually quite high, there are plenty of people who would like to contribute to projects but cannnot dedicate the time n effort to pass that initial threshold. This might allow people an ability to contribute at a lower level while gently introducing them to the codebase where perhaps they might become a regular contributer in the future.

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