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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

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Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#11

Post by spaceywilly »

kbar13 wrote: post #6
electric_muse wrote: post #5

I just submitted my first big open source contribution to the OpenAI agents SDK for JS. Every word except the issue I opened was done by AI. On the flip side, I’m preparing to open source a project I made for a serializable state machine with runtime hooks. But that’s blood sweat and tears labor. AI is writing a lot of the unit tests and the code, but it’s entirely by my architectural design. There’s a continuum here…

if you read his note i think he gives good insight as to why he wants PRs to signal AI involvement. that being said i feel like this is an intermediate step - it's really hard to review PRs that are AI slop because it's so easy for those who don't know how to use AI to create a multi-hundred/thousand line diff. but when AI is used well, it really saves time and often creates high quality work

As long as they make it easy to add a “made with AI” tag to the PR, it seems like there’s really no downside. I personally can’t imagine why someone would want to hide the fact they used AI. A contractor would not try to hide that they used an excavator to dig a hole instead of a shovel.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#13

Post by quotemstr »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10

I’m not a big AI fan but I do see it as just another tool in your toolbox. I wouldn’t really care how someone got to the end result that is a PR. But I also think that if a maintainer asks you to jump before submitting a PR, you politely ask, “how high?”

As a project maintainer, you shouldn't make rules unenforceable rules that you and everyone else know people will flout. Doing so comes makes you seem impotent and diminishes the respect people have for rules in general.

You might argue that by making rules, even futile ones, you at least establish expectations and take a moral stance. Well, you can make a statement without dressing it up as a rule. But you don't get to be sanctimonious that way I guess.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#14

Post by wahnfrieden »

Waterluvian wrote: post #10

I’m not a big AI fan but I do see it as just another tool in your toolbox. I wouldn’t really care how someone got to the end result that is a PR. But I also think that if a maintainer asks you to jump before submitting a PR, you politely ask, “how high?”

You should care. If someone submits a huge PR, you’re going to waste time asking questions and comprehending their intentions if the answer is that they don’t know either. If you know it’s generated and they haven’t reviewed it themselves, you can decide to shove it back into an LLM for next steps rather than expect the contributor to be able to do anything with your review feedback.

Unreviewed generated PRs can still be helpful starting points for further LLM work if they achieve desired results. But close reading with consideration of authorial intent, giving detailed comments, and asking questions from someone who didn't write or read the code is a waste of your time.

That's why we need to know if a contribution was generated or not.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#16

Post by hodgehog11 »

How does this not lead to a situation where no honest person can use any AI in their submissions? Surely pull requests that acknowledge AI tooling will be given significantly less attention, on the grounds that no one wants to read work that they know is written by AI.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#18

Post by freedomben »

rattlesnakedave wrote: post #12

In my personal projects I also require all contributors to disclose rather they’ve used an editor with any autocomplete features enabled.

Heh, that's a great way to make a point, but right now AI is nowhere near what a traditional editor autocomplete is. Yes you can use it that way, but it's by no means limited to that. If you think of AI as a fancy autocomplete, that's a good personal philosophy, but there are plenty of people that aren't using it that way

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#19

Post by Lerc »

I think this seems totally reasonable, the additional context provided is, I think, important to the requirement.

Some of the AI policy statements I have seen come across more as ideology statements. This is much better, saying the reasons for the requirement and offering a path forward. I'd like to see more of this and less "No droids allowed"

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#20

Post by voxl »

quotemstr wrote: post #13
Waterluvian wrote: post #10

I’m not a big AI fan but I do see it as just another tool in your toolbox. I wouldn’t really care how someone got to the end result that is a PR. But I also think that if a maintainer asks you to jump before submitting a PR, you politely ask, “how high?”

As a project maintainer, you shouldn't make rules unenforceable rules that you and everyone else know people will flout. Doing so comes makes you seem impotent and diminishes the respect people have for rules in general. You might argue that by making rules, even futile ones, you at least establish expectations and take a moral stance. Well, you can make a statement without dressing it up as a rule. But you don't get…

Except you can enforce this rule some of the time. People discover that AI was used or suspect it all the time, and people admit to it after some pressure all the time.

Not every time, but sometimes. The threat of being caught isn't meaningless. You can decide not to play in someone else's walled garden if you want but the least you can do is respect their rules, bare minimum of human decency.

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