Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 464 posts

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#51

Post by martin-t »

KK7NIL wrote: post #45
martin-t wrote: post #18

This feels like the OSS community is giving up. LLMs are lossily-compressed models of code and other text (often mass-scraped despite explicit non-consent) which has licenses almost always requiring attribution and very often other conditions. Just a few weeks ago a SOTA model was shown to reproduce non-trivial amounts of licensed code[0]. The idea of intelligence being emergent from compression is nothing new[1]. Th…

> I strongly object to anthropomorphising text transformers (e.g. "Assisted-by"). I don't think this is anthropomorphising, especially considering they also include non-LLM tools in that "Assisted-by" section. We're well past the Turing test now, whether these things are actually sentient or not is of no pragmatic importance if we can't distinguish their output from a sentient creature, especially when it comes to pr…

Would you say "assisted by vim" or "assisted by gcc"?

It should be either something like "(partially/completely) generated by" or if you want to include deterministic tools, then "Tools-used:".

The Turing test is an interesting thought experiment but we've seen it's easy for LLMs to sound human-like or make authoritative and convincing statements despite being completely wrong or full of nonsense. The Turing test is not a measure of intelligence, at least not an artificial one. (Though I find it quite amusing to think that the point at which a person chooses to refer to LLMs as intelligence is somewhat indicative of his own intelligence level.)

> whether these things are actually sentient or not is of no pragmatic importance if we can't distinguish their output from a sentient creature, especially when it comes to programming

It absolutely makes a difference: you can't own a human but you can own an LLM (or a corporation which is IMO equally wrong as owning a human).

Humans have needs which must be continually satisfied to remain alive. Humans also have a moral value (a positive one - at least for most of us) which dictates that being rendered unable to remain alive is wrong.

Now, what happens if LLMs have the same legal standing as humans and are thus able to participate in the economy in the same manner?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#52

Post by sarchertech »

Chance-Device wrote: post #49
sarchertech wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a court case the responsibility party very well could be the Linux foundation because this is a foreseeable consequence of allowing AI contributions. There’s no reasonable way for a human to make such a guarantee while using AI generated code.

It’s not about the mechanism: responsibility is a social construct, it works the way people say that it works. If we all agree that a human can agree to bear the responsibility for AI outputs, and face any consequences resulting from those outputs, then that’s the whole shebang.

Sure we could change the law. It would be a stupid change to allow individuals, organizations, and companies to completely shield themselves from the consequences of risky behaviors (more than we already do) simply by assigning all liability to a fall guy.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#53

Post by yoyohello13 »

pixel_popping wrote: post #31
pydry wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet it puts a stop to the tsunami of slop and it's pretty much impossible to prove anything of value was lost.

but why? it's a human making the PR and you can shame/ban that human anyway.

> it's a human making the PR

Is it? Remember when that agent wrote a hit piece about the maintainer because he wouldn't merge it's PR?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#54

Post by Andrex »

sarchertech wrote: post #15
afro88 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same as if a regular person did the same. They are responsible for it. If you're using AI, check the code doesn't violate licenses

How could you do that though? You can’t guarantee that there aren’t chunks of copied code that infringes.

Let me introduce you to the concept of submarine patents...

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#55

Post by streetfighter64 »

shevy-java wrote: post #26
qsort wrote: post #5

Basically the rules are that you can use AI, but you take full responsibility for your commits and code must satisfy the license. That's... refreshingly normal? Surely something most people acting in good faith can get behind.

But why should AI then be attributed if it is merely a tool that is used?

It isn't?

> AI agents MUST NOT add Signed-off-by tags. Only humans can legally certify the Developer Certificate of Origin (DCO).

They mention an Assisted-by tag, but that also contains stuff like "clang-tidy". Surely you're not interpreting that as people "attributing" the work to the linter?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#57

Post by jaggederest »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #13
panzi wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the output is public domain it's fine as I understand it.

Makes sense to me. But so anybody can take Public Domain code and place it under GNU Public License (by dropping it into a Linux source-code file) ? Surely the person doing so would be responsible for doing so, but are they doing anything wrong?

The core thing about licenses, in general, is that they only grant new usage. If you can already use the code because it's public domain, they don't further restrict it. The license, in that case, is irrelevant.

Remember that licenses are powered by copyright - granting a license to non-copyrighted code doesn't do anything, because there's no enforcement mechanism.

This is also why copyright reform for software engineering is so important, because code entering the public domain cuts the gordian knot of licensing issues.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#58

Post by streetfighter64 »

philipov wrote: post #25
sarchertech wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s no reasonable way for you to use AI generated code and guarantee it doesn’t infringe. The whole use it but if it behaves as expected, it’s your fault is a ridiculous stance.

If you think it's an unacceptable risk to use a tool you can't trust when your own head is on the line, you're right, and you shouldn't use it. You don't have to guarantee anything. You just have to accept punishment.

Yeah, but that's not a useful thing to do because not everybody thinks about that or considers it a problem. If somebody's careless and contributes copyrighted code, that's a problem for linux too, not only the author.

For comparison, you wouldn't say, "you're free to use a pair of dice to decide what material to build the bridge out of, as long as you take responsibility if it falls down", because then of course somebody would be careless enough to build a bridge that falls down.

Preventing the problem from the beginning is better than ensuring you have somebody to blame for the problem when it happens.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#60

Post by bpt3 »

sarchertech wrote: post #52
Chance-Device wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s not about the mechanism: responsibility is a social construct, it works the way people say that it works. If we all agree that a human can agree to bear the responsibility for AI outputs, and face any consequences resulting from those outputs, then that’s the whole shebang.

Sure we could change the law. It would be a stupid change to allow individuals, organizations, and companies to completely shield themselves from the consequences of risky behaviors (more than we already do) simply by assigning all liability to a fall guy.

In this case, the "fall guy" is the person who actually introduced the code in question into the codebase.

They wouldn't be some patsy that is around just to take blame, but the actual responsible party for the issue.

Post reply on HN