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Copilot edited an ad into my PR

notes.zachmanson.com

451–460 of 704 posts

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#451

I asked copilot how developers would react if AI agents put ads in their PRs. >Developers would react extremely negatively. This would be seen as 1. A massive breach of trust. 2. Unprofessional and disruptive. 3. A security/integrity concern. 4. Career-ending for the product. The backlash would likely be swift and severe. Sometimes AI can be right.

I'm reminded of the ads when logging into Ununtu in the motd...nothing infuriated me more (I only used it for a short period).

Me too, main reason I switched to Debian.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

We are not training on the contents of private repos, but we do plan on training on usage data with Copilot unless you opt out before April 24. Details here: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/updates-to-gi... That post has a link to the FAQ which might also be helpful: https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/188488

Opt out is the same as forcing this on people that don’t want it. You know this.

Microslop proving their name time and time again.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#453
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude adds "Co-authored by" attribution for itself when committing, so you can see the human author and also the bot. I think this is a good balance, because if you don't care about the bot you still see the human author. And if you do care (for example, I'd like to be able to review commits and see which were substantially bot-written and which were mostly human) then it's also easy.

> I'd like to be able to review commits and see which were substantially bot-written and which were mostly human) then it's also easy. Why is this, though? I'm genuinely curious. My code-quality bar doesn't change either way, so why would this be anything but distracting to my decision making?

Accountability. Same reason I want to read human written content rather than obvious AI: both can be equally shit, but at least with humans there's a high probability of the aspirational quality of wanting to be considered "good"

With AI I have no way of telling if it was from a one line prompt or hundreds. I have to assume it was one line by default if there's no human sticking their neck out for it.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#454
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude adds "Co-authored by" attribution for itself when committing, so you can see the human author and also the bot. I think this is a good balance, because if you don't care about the bot you still see the human author. And if you do care (for example, I'd like to be able to review commits and see which were substantially bot-written and which were mostly human) then it's also easy.

> I'd like to be able to review commits and see which were substantially bot-written and which were mostly human) then it's also easy. Why is this, though? I'm genuinely curious. My code-quality bar doesn't change either way, so why would this be anything but distracting to my decision making?

Personally it would make the choice to say no to the entire thing a whole lot easier if they self-reported on themselves automatically and with no recourse to hide the fact that they've used LLMs. I want to see it for dependencies (I already avoid them, and would especially do so with ones heavily developed via LLMs), products I'd like to use, PRs submitted to my projects, and so on, so I can choose to avoid them.

Mostly this is because, all things considered, I really do not need to interact with any of that, so I'm doing it by choice. Since it's entirely voluntary I have absolutely no incentive to interact with things no one bothered to spend real time and effort on.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a self-own, it's honest disclosure. It's unethical (if not outright fraudulent) to publish LLM work as if it were your own. Claude setting itself as coauthor is a good way to address this problem, and it doing so by default is a very good thing.

I think it depends a lot if you reviewed it as carefully as you would your own code. Of course most people don’t do that

I don't put human code reviewers down as coauthors let alone the sole authors of my commit. So honestly, the fact that a vibe coded commit lists me as the author at all is a little bit dodgy but I think I'm okay with it. The LLM needs to be coauthor at least though, if not outright the author.

So even if I go over the commit with a fine tooth comb and feel comfortable staking my personal reputation on the commit, I still can't call myself the sole author.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#458

This is why one reason why local coding models are quite relevant, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. No ads, and you are in control.

In principle, one could train the AI to insert ads in its answers. So no, if you only do inference locally with an open-weight model you are still not in control.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#459
the SourceForge parallel is what gets me. they did the exact same thing with installers and it killed them. people moved to GitHub specifically to get away from that.

1.5M PRs is wild though. that's a lot of repos where the "product tips" just sat there unchallenged because nobody reads bot-generated PR descriptions carefully enough. which is kinda the real problem here, not the ads themselves.

Re: Copilot edited an ad into my PR

#460
post #440

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Claude adds "Co-authored by" attribution for itself when committing, so you can see the human author and also the bot. I think this is a good balance, because if you don't care about the bot you still see the human author. And if you do care (for example, I'd like to be able to review commits and see which were substantially bot-written and which were mostly human) then it's also easy.

> I'd like to be able to review commits and see which were substantially bot-written and which were mostly human) then it's also easy. Why is this, though? I'm genuinely curious. My code-quality bar doesn't change either way, so why would this be anything but distracting to my decision making?

LLMs can make mistakes in different ways than humans tend to. Think "confidently wrong human throwing flags up with their entire approach" vs. "confidently wrong LLM writing convincing-looking code that misunderstands or ignores things under the surface."

Outside of your one personal project, it can also benefit you to understand the current tendencies and limitations of AI agents, either to consider whether they're in a state that'd be useful to use for yourself, or to know if there are any patterns in how they operate (or not, if you're claiming that).

Burying your head in the sand and choosing to be a guinea pig for AI companies by reviewing all of their slop with the same care you'd review human contributions with (instead of cutting them off early when identified as problematic) is your prerogative, but it assumes you're fine being isolated from the industry.

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