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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

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Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#221

Post by mattbee »

otterley wrote: post #201
cvoss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter how and where a PR comes from, because reviewers are fallible and finite, so trust enters the equation inevitably. You must ask "Do I trust where this came from?" And to answer that, you need to know where it come from. If trust didn't matter, there wouldn't have been a need for the Linux Kernel team to ban the University of Minnesota for attempting to intentionally smuggle bugs through the PR process…

If it comes with good documentation and appropriate tests, does that help?

The observation that inspired this policy is that if you used AI, it is likely you don't know if the code, the documentation or tests are good or appropriate.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#222

Post by ants_everywhere »

andruby wrote: post #108

> I try to assist inexperienced contributors and coach them to the finish line, because getting a PR accepted is an achievement to be proud of I really appreciate this point from mitchellh. Giving thoughtful constructive feedback to help a junior developer improve is a gift. Yet it would be a waste of time if the PR submitter is just going to pass it to an AI without learning from it.

Junior developers are entering a workforce where they will never not be using AI

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#223

Post by otterley »

mattbee wrote: post #221
otterley wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it comes with good documentation and appropriate tests, does that help?

The observation that inspired this policy is that if you used AI, it is likely you don't know if the code, the documentation or tests are good or appropriate.

What if you started with good documentation that you personally wrote, you gave that to the agent, and you verified the tests were appropriate and passed?

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#224

Post by sesm »

In the age of LLMs responsible maintainers should treat contributor PRs the same way they treat AI slop: rewrite it if it's salvageable and ignore it if it's not. Accepting any contribution 'as is' shouldn't be allowed unless it's a trivial 1-liner (with a thorough investigation attached).

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#225

Post by sho_hn »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #194
tsimionescu wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a false equivalence. You can teach a beginner to become an intermediate (and later a master, if they stick to it). You can't teach an LLM to be better. Every piece of feedback you give to an LLM is like screaming into the void - it wastes your time, and doesn't change the LLM one iota.

"Every piece of feedback you give to an LLM is like screaming into the void - it wastes your time, and doesn't change the LLM one iota." I think you just haven't gotten the hang of it yet, which is fine... the tooling is very immature and hard to get consistent results with. But this isn't a given. Some people do get good, steerable LLM coding setups.

Steering via prompting isn't the same as fundamentally changing the LLM by teaching, as you can do with humans. I think OP understands this better than you.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#226

Post by bandrami »

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?”

Whether the output of AI can be copyrighted remains a legal minefield, so if I were running a project where copyright-based protections are important (say, anything GPL) I would want to know if a PR contained them.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#227

Post by sho_hn »

There's a lot of discussion about the ethics of AI disclosure going on here, but this maintainer is writing this from a place I recognize - community-driven, participatory development by people who enjoy programming, talking about it, and teaching each other how to do it.

Not every software project needs to attempt to maximize productivity. Not every software project is a business. Some are just created by people who enjoy programming. By hand. It's OK to set that as a culture. I guess I get it.

I don't mind AI tools, I use them judiciously, but sometimes I just want to do some coding - for me it's a genuinely relaxing and mentally satisfying activity to write some good code -, and I'm happy there's still others around me who do as well. Gardening context prompts and what not just isn't nearly as fun as just doing it, and not every project has to be economical. This one is yet another terminal emulator; it's not going to be the next unicorn. But I bet it's fun to hack on.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#228

Post by explorigin »

otterley wrote: post #201
cvoss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter how and where a PR comes from, because reviewers are fallible and finite, so trust enters the equation inevitably. You must ask "Do I trust where this came from?" And to answer that, you need to know where it come from. If trust didn't matter, there wouldn't have been a need for the Linux Kernel team to ban the University of Minnesota for attempting to intentionally smuggle bugs through the PR process…

If it comes with good documentation and appropriate tests, does that help?

I suppose it depends if AI is writing the tests an documentation.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#230

Post by thunderfork »

eks391 wrote: post #178
alfalfasprout wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mental gymnastics the parent poster went through to equate an LLM to the printing press in this sense are mind-boggling.

Ironically, I thought your parent commenter had to go through mental gymnastics to say that their parents analogy of the printing press isn't applicable to an LLM. Neither you nor your parent gave me any satisfactory reasons why they aren't similar, just your mental superiority as proof that oceanplexian must be wrong.

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