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Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

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Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#121

Post by Folcon »

ThePhysicist wrote: post #82

Interesting that on one hand the valuation of these AI providers is based on the assumption that all code (and everything else producing digital artefacts) will be written using AI in the near future, on the other hand almost all popular open source projects fight to keep AI contributions out. Hard to reconcile. Personally I'm also experiencing a bit of AI hangover after using it a lot in my own open-source projects.…

I've very much come around to this perspective as well

Our current generation of AI tools still seems to be very much not there when you really try and use it's output

There's a problematic dopamine dynamic as well where it's far too easy to reach for an AI when doing some work or starting a new project

I'm currently trying to dopamine hack my brain back to preferring to handwriting the majority of my code as opposed to reaching for claude

Time will tell if this is just a phase and it will get better or we'll need some sort of LLMs-anonymous

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#122

Post by throwfaraway135 »

koteelok wrote: post #103
throwfaraway135 wrote: post #98

Wouldn't it make much more sense to just reject _low_ quality PR's? On an unrelated note, I lost all respect and eagerness to try it out after the drama.

No, it wouldn't. The goal of reviewing PRs is to mentor and find new maintainers who will eventually replace the current ones. You just can't expect someone who isn't willing enough to write one good PR to be willing to become a good maintainer.

> write one good PR

is about quality not AI which is exactly my point.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#123

Post by blackoil »

TomasBM wrote: post #7

It's a fair policy. Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I can only imagine how frustrating this can get in open projects that get a lot of contributions. However, I don't think this will discourage AI-based coding at all. In fact, I see two potential outcomes of these policie…

Better way is to provide a Claude.md with strong stylistic guidelines and loc requirements. Else it will be a chicken and mouse game of what is from AI.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#124

Post by TomasBM »

croon wrote: post #104
TomasBM wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting initiative. What are the guiding reasons behind these lists? I can't think of a functional reason for a no-AI policy: if it runs, it runs, regardless of who or what made it. Also, even if you avoid AI-generated slop, you can't really avoid the human-generated or human+AI-generated slop that passes your filters. Still, I can definitely think of good non-functional reasons: provenance, accountability, proof…

The reasons are functional in aggregate, but not necessarily per specific PR. You could get a perfectly adequate instance of a PR that is easily readable and verifiable while generated by an LLM, but generally they're not. A policy pushes the aggregate to at least what looks and communicates as a human made PR that is functionally easier to approve. Whether they are created by an LLM or not is then secondary, but it…

Good point. Even if you submit small, verifiable and readable changes, you can still overload the review process by submitting too many of them (e.g., 100s of PRs).

But I'd argue that some projects [1] could benefit from the speed (and sometimes, quality) of AI code generation without filtering by something that's difficult to identify (i.e., is it truly human-generated).

One way could be to constrain the size of each commit and PR, and invest more heavily into the review process (e.g., tests, static/dynamic analysis, sandbox deployments), so even if you get 100s of contributions, you can knock each out quickly.

Obviously, easier said than done. And at that point, you may as well use the AI to make the commits yourself, instead of relying on community contributions.

[1] Of course, this is only the case if the project's only purpose is to be a tool, and not also an educational reason for humans to learn how to code - in which case, it makes sense to invest more into identifying the "cheaters".

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#125

Post by ivorius »

jon-wood wrote: post #112
dspillett wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> allows the reviewer to reject it on the "AI" grounds … but still unfortunately leaves reviewers having to spend time checking submissions and rejecting them.

At least half the people firing off LLM generated PRs will have left the "Coauthored-by: Claude" line on it allowing automated rejections.

Unfortunately, only a single PR like this comes to mind. Most AI authors we've seen were identifiable mainly by overly verbose PR descriptions, meaningless code changes and copy-pasting more AI output when questioned.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#126

Post by ivorius »

blackoil wrote: post #123
TomasBM wrote: post #7

It's a fair policy. Getting those verbose, AI-authored walls of text is very annoying, especially when you're expected to thoroughly review it. It's like a denial-of-service attack on the human mind. I can only imagine how frustrating this can get in open projects that get a lot of contributions. However, I don't think this will discourage AI-based coding at all. In fact, I see two potential outcomes of these policie…

Better way is to provide a Claude.md with strong stylistic guidelines and loc requirements. Else it will be a chicken and mouse game of what is from AI.

I made a PR like that, but it was rejected by the community (for some valid reasons and some not so valid). https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pull/118681

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#127

Post by throwfaraway135 »

tmountain wrote: post #19
taris2 wrote: post #12

Godot is one of the worst run open source projects with a crawling pace since 2014.

It’s been wildly successful. Poorly run projects tend to fail.

If Unity didn't commit hara-kiri I'm positive it would be much less successful.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#128

Post by nkrisc »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #98

Wouldn't it make much more sense to just reject _low_ quality PR's? On an unrelated note, I lost all respect and eagerness to try it out after the drama.

They want people who will be around to maintain the features as well. There have been several areas of the project that have languished at times because no current maintainer had the capacity or familiarity to move it forward.

Also, what drama?

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#129

Post by plst »

throwfaraway135 wrote: post #98

Wouldn't it make much more sense to just reject _low_ quality PR's? On an unrelated note, I lost all respect and eagerness to try it out after the drama.

Another problem, AI allows many people to submit PRs that may look viable with very low effort. So you get a lot more code to review, often submitted by people who are not actually familiar with the codebase. So they may not even be able to make requested changes to their patches. Combine that with AI's verbosity. The maintainers drown in noise.

Re: Godot will no longer accept AI-authored code contributions

#130

Post by timacles »

TomasBM wrote: post #18
manvel_hn wrote: post #3

There are some curated lists of no-AI software. Would be nice to have an index / plot of how that changes in time. https://codeberg.org/brib/slopfree-software-index https://noai.starlightnet.work/list.html

Interesting initiative. What are the guiding reasons behind these lists? I can't think of a functional reason for a no-AI policy: if it runs, it runs, regardless of who or what made it. Also, even if you avoid AI-generated slop, you can't really avoid the human-generated or human+AI-generated slop that passes your filters. Still, I can definitely think of good non-functional reasons: provenance, accountability, proof…

So you didn’t read the article?
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