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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

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Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#391

Post by simoncion »

potsandpans wrote: post #318
hombre_fatal wrote: post #310

I see two things here. 1. The world has fundamentally changed due to LLMs. You don't know where a code submission falls between "written thoroughly with eternal vigilance" vs "completely vibe-coded" since it's now trivially to generate the later. There's no going back. And a lot of comments here seem stuck on this point. 2. The maintainer naively or stubbornly imagines that he can get everyone to pre-sort their code…

In a nondismissive way, I see things like this (the gh issue) as part of the reactionary movement / counter culture of our time. People want to feel agency and will react to mainstream pressures. And make up whatever excuses along the way to justify what theyre feeling.

It's not about "feeling agency" or fabricating a justification. As the PR says:

"AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

I think, at this stage of AI, it is a common courtesy to disclose this.

In a perfect world, AI assistance would produce equal or higher quality work than any human. That isn't the world we live in today, and in many cases it's generating slop. I say this despite being a fan of and using them successfully myself (with heavy supervision)! I think the major issue is inexperienced human drivers of AI that aren't able to adequately review their generated code. As a result, they're pull requesting code that I'm sure they would be ashamed of if they knew how bad it was.

The disclosure is to help maintainers assess how much attention to give a PR. While we aren't obligated to in any way, 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. But if it's just an AI on the other side, I don't need to put in this effort, and it's rude to trick me into doing so.

I'm a fan of AI assistance and use AI tooling myself. But, we need to be responsible about what we're using it for and respectful to the humans on the other side that may have to review or maintain this code."

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#392

Post by simoncion »

victorbjorklund wrote: post #22
kg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The OP seems to be coming from the perspective of "my time as a PR reviewer is limited and valuable, so I don't want to spend it coaching an AI agent or a thin human interface to an AI agent". From that perspective, it makes perfect sense to want to know how much a human is actually in the loop for a given PR. If the PR is good enough to not need much review then whether AI wrote it is less important. An angle not me…

As long as some of the code is written by humans it should be enforceable. If we assume AI code has no copyright (not sure it has been tested in courts yet) then it would only be the parts written by the AI. So if AI writes 100 lines of code in Ghostty then I guess yes someone can "steal" that code (but no other code in Ghostty). Why would anyone do that? 100 random lines of AI code in isolation isn't really worth an…

You might be interested in reading Part 2 of the US Copyright Office's report on Copyright and Artificial Intelligence: https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...>

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#393

Post by simoncion »

antirez wrote: post #127

I'll cover in my YouTube why this is wrong but TLDR: you need to evaluate quality not process. AI can be used in diametrically different ways and the reason why this policy could be enforced is because it will be obvious if the code is produced via a solo flight of some AI agent. For the same reason that's not a policy that will improve anything.

> ...you need to evaluate quality not process.

Respectfully, Mr. Redis, sir, that's what's going on. I don't see any reason to make a video about it. From the PR that's TFA:

"In a perfect world, AI assistance would produce equal or higher quality work than any human. That isn't the world we live in today, and in many cases it's generating slop. I say this despite being a fan of and using them successfully myself (with heavy supervision)! I think the major issue is inexperienced human drivers of AI that aren't able to adequately review their generated code. As a result, they're pull requesting code that I'm sure they would be ashamed of if they knew how bad it was.

The disclosure is to help maintainers assess how much attention to give a PR. While we aren't obligated to in any way, 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. But if it's just an AI on the other side, I don't need to put in this effort, and it's rude to trick me into doing so.

I'm a fan of AI assistance and use AI tooling myself. But, we need to be responsible about what we're using it for and respectful to the humans on the other side that may have to review or maintain this code."

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#394

Post by martin-t »

jhanschoo wrote: post #265
ineedasername wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative. There’s lots of details to figure, but the genie is out of the bottle. Sure it’s a big hill to climb in rethinking IP laws to align with a societal desire that generating IP continue to be a viable economic work product, but that is what’s necessary.

An AI model's output can be transformative, but you can be unlucky enough that the LLM memorized the data that it gave you.

I don't see why verbatim or not should matter at all.

How complex does a mechanical transformation have to be to not be considered plagiarism, copyright infringement or parasitism?

If somebody writes a GPL-licensed program, is it enough to change all variable and function names to get rid of those pesky users' rights? Do you have to change the order of functions? Do you have to convert it to a different language? Surely nobody would claim c2rust is transformative even though the resulting code can be wildly different if you apply enough mechanical transformations.

All LLMs do is make the mechanical transformations 1) probabilistic 2) opaque 3) all at once 4) using multiple projects as a source.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#395

Post by martin-t »

aspenmayer wrote: post #343
raggi wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

reddit is a user hostile company, have been forever, always will be. they take rights over your content, farm things about you, sell data, do invasive things in the mobile apps, use creepware cookies, etc. Excerpt from the user agreement: When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable licens…

To a certain reading, this is user-centric: it’s increasing the size of the audience pool beyond that of shared language speakers and readers to the entire literate human race. This is an important point to acknowledge, because every silver lining has its cloud.

User-centric would be giving users choice.

It really is that simple.

Forcing something on people from a position of power is never in their favor.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#396

Post by martin-t »

threecheese wrote: post #292
shkkmo wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative Yes, the training of the model itself is (or should be) a transformative act so you can train a model on whatever you have legal access to view. However, that doesn't mean that the output of the model is automatically not infringing. If the model is prompted to create a copy of some copyrighted work, that is (or…

The fact that GitHub’s Copilot has an enterprise feature that matches model output against code having certain licenses - in order to prevent you from using it, with a notification - suggests the model outputs are at least potentially infringing. If MS were compelled to reveal how these completions are generated, there’s at least a possibility that they directly use public repositories to source text chunks that thei…

> directly use public repositories

I don't see why a company which has been waging a multi decade war against GPL and users' rights would stop at _public_ repositories.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#397

Post by martin-t »

Filligree wrote: post #209
bsder wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative. If you have code that happens to be identical to some else's code or implements someone's proprietary algorithm, you're going to lose in court even if you claim an "AI" gave it to you. AI is training on private Github repos and coughing them up. I've had it regurgitate a very well written piece of code to do a p…

How is that obviously proprietary? Aren't you implicitly assuming that the AI couldn't have written it on its own?

It cannot do anything on its own, it's just a (very complex, probabilistic) mechanical transformation (including interpolation) of training data and a prompt.

Advertising autocomplete as AI was a genius move because people start humanizing it and look for human-centric patterns.

Thinking A"I" can do anything on its own is like seeing faces in rocks on Mars.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#398

Post by mhh__ »

nullc wrote: post #353
mhh__ wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't work. People will include fake prompts, the real ones are way too personal. You can learn a lot from how people use these tools.

That's like saying "sorry, source code is too personal. In my 'open' project you get only binaries". ... and then I think about all the weights only "open" AI projects and walk off in disgust.

Keep in mind that in industries where people code but aren't really programmers this literally does happen, sometimes very "big" people will be basically scared to share their code because it won't be very good.

But anyway what I mean is that code is us speaking like a computer, LLMs are the other way around, you can see a lot from how someone interacts with the machine.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#399

Post by nullc »

mhh__ wrote: post #398
nullc wrote: post #353

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying "sorry, source code is too personal. In my 'open' project you get only binaries". ... and then I think about all the weights only "open" AI projects and walk off in disgust.

Keep in mind that in industries where people code but aren't really programmers this literally does happen, sometimes very "big" people will be basically scared to share their code because it won't be very good. But anyway what I mean is that code is us speaking like a computer, LLMs are the other way around, you can see a lot from how someone interacts with the machine.

not just non-programmers. It's a common problem with jr programmers and good programmer internships (for example) make it a point of forcing the interns to expose themselves ASAP to get over it.

I think if everyone goes into it knowing that it'll be part of what they publish it would be less of an issue.

I mean, unless you're all a bunch of freaks who have instructed your LLM to cosplay as Slave Leia and can't work otherwise, in which case your issues are beyond my pay grade. :P

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#400

Post by strogonoff »

0points wrote: post #385
strogonoff wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's an whole genre of musicians focusing only on creating royalty free covers There is no such thing as a “royalty free cover”. Either it is a full on faithful cover, which you can perform as long as license fees are paid, and in which case both the performer and the original songwriter get royalties, or it is a “transformative cover” which requires negotiation with the publisher/rights owner (and in that case…

> Have you considered that it is simply singers-performers who like to sing and would like to earn a bit of money from it, but don’t have many original songs if their own? Or, maybe you start to pay attention? They are selling their songs cheaper for TV, radio or ads. > Even pretending they were, if you compare between artists specialising in covers and big tech trying to expropriate IP They're literally working for…

> They are selling their songs cheaper for TV, radio or ads.

I guess that somehow refutes the points I made, I just can’t see how.

Radio stations, like the aforementioned venue owners, pay the rights organizations a flat annual fee. TV programs do need to license these songs (as unlike simple cover here the use is substantially transformative), but again: 1) it does not rip off songwriters (holder of songwriter rights for a song gets royalties for performance of its covers, songwriter has a say in any such licensing agreement), and 2) often a cover is a specifically considered and selected choice: it can be miles better fitting for a scene than the original (just remember Motion Picture Soundtrack in that Westworld scene), and unlike the original it does not tend to make the scene all about itself so much. It feels like you are yet to demonstrate how it is particularly parasitic.

Edit: I mean honest covers; modifying a song a little bit and passing it as original should be very sueable by the rights holder and I would be very surprised if Spotify decided to do that even if they fired their entire legal department and replaced it with one LLM chatbot.

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