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Gentoo AI Policy

wiki.gentoo.org

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Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#101

Post by 0000000000100 »

totallymike wrote: post #66
jjmarr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

[flagged]

Go look at the PR man, it's pretty clear that he hasn't just dumped out LLM garbage and has put serious effort and understanding into the problem he's trying to solve.

It seems a little mean to tell him to stop coding forever when his intentions and efforts seem pretty positive for the health of the project.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#102

Post by sumeno »

DrNosferatu wrote: post #97

I would say the question is, do you iterate on the output or not? My perspective is that this criticism is only valid for “single-shot in spirit” / “prompt and forget” LLM powered contributions.

That ignores two out of the three reasons they gave for this decision

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#103

Post by AdieuToLogic »

jjmarr wrote: post #47
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Perhaps the most telling portion of their decision is: Quality concerns. Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly looking, but meaningless content. They are capable of providing good assistance if you are careful enough, but we can't really rely on that. At this point, they pose both the risk of lowering the quality of Gentoo projects, and of requiring an unfair human effort from developers and users to…

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

> I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy.

This is a different decision made by the LLVM project than the one made by Gentoo, which is neither right nor wrong IMHO.

> The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR.

This may be part of the justification of the published Gentoo policy. I am not a maintainer of same so cannot say for certain. I can say it is implied within their policy:

  At this point,  they pose both the risk of lowering the 
  quality of Gentoo  projects, and of requiring an unfair 
  human effort from  developers and users to review 
  contributions ...
> LLMs increase review burden a ton ...

Hence the Gentoo policy.

> ... but I would say it can be a fair tradeoff, because I'm learning quicker and can contribute at a level I otherwise couldn't.

I get it. I really do.

I would also ask - of the requested changes reviewers have made, what percentage are due to LLM generated changes? If more than zero, does this corroborate the Gentoo policy position of:

  Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly 
  looking, but meaningless content.
If "erroneous" or "invalid" where the adjective used instead of "meaningless"?

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#104

Post by fuoqi »

totallymike wrote: post #66
jjmarr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using AI to contribute to LLVM, which has a liberal policy. The code is of terrible quality and I am at 100+ comments on my latest PR. That being said, my latest PR is my second-ever to LLVM and is an entire linter check. I am learning far more about compilers at a much faster pace than if I took the "normal route" of tiny bugfixes. I also try to do review passes on my own code before asking for code review…

[flagged]

Well, some people just operate under the "some of you may die, but it's a sacrifice I am willing to make" principle...

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#105

Post by pabs3 »

logicprog wrote: post #4

There are reasonable ethical concerns one may have with AI (around data center impacts on communities, and the labor used to SFT and RLHF them), but these aren't: > Commercial AI projects are frequently indulging in blatant copyright violations to train their models. I thought we (FOSS) were anti copyright? > Their operations are causing concerns about the huge use of energy and water. This is massively overblown. If…

> I thought we (FOSS) were anti copyright?

For Free Software, copyright creates the ability to use licenses (like the GPL) to ensure source code availability.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#106

Post by noosphr »

totallymike wrote: post #84
noosphr wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's no different to on boarding any new contributor. I cringe at the code I put out when I was 18. On top of all that every open source project has a gray hair problem. Telling people excited about a new tech to never contribute makes sure that all projects turn into templeOS when the lead maintainer moves on.

Onboarding a new contributor implies you’re investing time into someone you’re confident will pay off over the long run as an asset to the project. Reviewing LLM slop doesn’t grant any of that, you’re just plugging thumbs into cracks in the glass until the slop-generating contributor gets bored and moves on to another project or feels like they got what they wanted, and then moves on to another project. I accept that…

>Onboarding a new contributor implies you’re investing time into someone you’re confident will pay off over the long run as an asset to the project.

No you don't. And if you're that entitled to people's time you will simply get no new contributors.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#107

Post by joecool1029 »

attentive wrote: post #88
dizlexic wrote: post #56

This might get me in trouble, but with all the negativity I’m seeing here I’ve got to ask. Why do you care? Their sandbox their rules, and if you care because you want to contribute you’re still free to do so. Unless you’re an LLM I guess, but the rest of us should have no problem. The negativity just seems overblown. More power to them, and if this was a bad call they’ll revisit it.

> and if this was a bad call they’ll revisit it. how would they know? - this is (one of) the ways for people to let them know

It isn't though. This is just noise. It's a good conversation thread for HN, but it has absolutely zero influence on Gentoo policy.

The only way it'll be revisited is if active Gentoo developers and/or contributors really start to push with a justification to get it changed and they agree to revisit discussing it again. I can tell you every maintainer has heard the line: 'I would have contributed if you did X thing'.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#108

Post by Kwpolska »

paulcole wrote: post #48
AdieuToLogic wrote: post #6

Perhaps the most telling portion of their decision is: Quality concerns. Popular LLMs are really great at generating plausibly looking, but meaningless content. They are capable of providing good assistance if you are careful enough, but we can't really rely on that. At this point, they pose both the risk of lowering the quality of Gentoo projects, and of requiring an unfair human effort from developers and users to…

How is it telling at all? It’s just what every other tech bro on here wants to believe, that using LLM code is somehow less pure than using free-range-organic human written code.

Tech bros want the exact opposite, so that they can sell their AI crap and replace human developers with AI bots.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#109

Post by fuoqi »

puilp0502 wrote: post #80

Every time I encounter these kinds of policy, I can't help but wonder how these policies would be enforced: The people who are considerate enough to abide by these policies, are the ones who would have "cared" about the code qualities and stuff like that, so the policy is a moot point for these kinds of people. OTOH, the people who recklessly spam "contributions" generated from LLMs, by their very nature, would not r…

It's often quite easy to distinguish LLM-generated low-effort slop and it's far easier to point to the established policy than to explain why the PR is a complete garbage. On Github it's even easier to detect by inspecting the author's contribution history (and if it's private it's an automatic red flag).

Of course, if someone has used LLM during development as a helper tool and done the necessary work of properly reviewing and fixing the generated code, then it can be borderline impossible to detect, but such PRs are much less problematic.

Re: Gentoo AI Policy

#110

Post by adastra22 »

dizlexic wrote: post #56

This might get me in trouble, but with all the negativity I’m seeing here I’ve got to ask. Why do you care? Their sandbox their rules, and if you care because you want to contribute you’re still free to do so. Unless you’re an LLM I guess, but the rest of us should have no problem. The negativity just seems overblown. More power to them, and if this was a bad call they’ll revisit it.

I like the idea of Gentoo, and I've considered switching back to it. I won't now, as I don't see a future for it if this is the attitude they take towards new technologies.
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