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Don't credit the LLM

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Re: Don't credit the LLM

#31

Post by WCSTombs »

antihipocrat wrote: post #23
WCSTombs wrote: post #3

Taking credit for something you didn't do, whether it was done by another person or by an LLM, is dishonest and unethical. Prompting an LLM to create something is obviously not the same thing as creating it, and I feel this article is trying to normalize tacit plagiarism. In most contexts I'm aware of where assigning credit actually matters, human authorship and LLM authorship are very much distinguished, and failing…

If I plan a project to build an app and write the full technical specifications and architecture myself, draft data structures, and even provide logic suggestions, and then hand it over to a team of humans to implement - it is at least my teams work. A case can be made that it still primarily my own work (no one expresses much issue with the title: Sid Meier's Civilization as an example). If I have a large amount of…

I don't understand this rebuttal at all. There is a huge difference between having an idea and implementing it yourself, and handing your idea (plus suggestions and data structures or whatever) to other people to implement. In the latter case, the team completing the project gets a lot of credit for the work. That has certainly been the case everywhere I've worked, and I wouldn't have it any other way, even in cases where I was more of the concept guy. I haven't played Civilization, but I'm sure if you play it to the end, you'll see a nice list of people who worked on the game, not just Sid Meier.

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#32

Post by jdub »

yuliyp wrote: post #30

An LLM is not me. It is capable of doing more "work" but it also doesn't have my mental models and experience. My colleagues know roughly my areas of expertise. If I say "I think that X is happening" they'll assume that is the result of my expertise being applied and react accordingly. If I say "[LLM] thinks X is happening" they'll react differently and I want them to . Just like I might say "I suspect X is happening…

the phrase "[LLM] thinks X is happening" is good chunk of the problem

it didn't. it produced an output, and you hopefully invoked some human judgement before believing it was worth sharing, and you are hopefully expecting to be accountable if that judgement was incorrect (whatever the failure mode)

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#33

Post by pants2 »

jdub wrote: post #32
yuliyp wrote: post #30

An LLM is not me. It is capable of doing more "work" but it also doesn't have my mental models and experience. My colleagues know roughly my areas of expertise. If I say "I think that X is happening" they'll assume that is the result of my expertise being applied and react accordingly. If I say "[LLM] thinks X is happening" they'll react differently and I want them to . Just like I might say "I suspect X is happening…

the phrase "[LLM] thinks X is happening" is good chunk of the problem it didn't. it produced an output, and you hopefully invoked some human judgement before believing it was worth sharing, and you are hopefully expecting to be accountable if that judgement was incorrect (whatever the failure mode)

You must be fun at parties

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#34

Post by comex »

At work I recently credited Claude with writing some of the tests in my PR. Why? Partly to apologize for the verbosity of the tests making them harder to review. Partly to set expectations: the tests are more likely to be buggy, low-quality, or incomplete, or misunderstand the code being tested, than if I had written them by hand.

I did in fact "bother to review" the tests, and I thought they were good enough to merge. Indeed, they were better than what I would have written on my own: they were lower-quality on a line-by-line basis, but for tests, quantity is a quality of its own, and I would not have bothered to write nearly as many tests. Even so, it was worth flagging that Claude wrote them.

If I trusted LLMs more, would I still feel the need to credit them? Maybe. They are improving very quickly, and I think they will eventually improve to the point where a mostly-LLM-written PR will be as good as mine in every way. Then it will no longer be necessary to apologize for submitting LLM code. But if and when that point is reached, I wouldn’t get used to taking credit for said code! Because it probably won’t be much longer until the human in the loop becomes redundant.

Going back to today, I don’t feel the need to credit LLMs when I use them for tasks that don’t involve submitting their output. In particular, they have recently become quite good at finding bugs in my code.

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#36

Post by qprofyeh »

So many comments in here are missing the point.

By not crediting and personifying the LLM, one (re)takes full human responsibility over the produced works and stated claims. As a result one won’t become an “agent” for the LLM.

The title could have been Don’t blame the LLM.

When we first started using LLMs professionally it was fine to hide behind disclaimers. Now with widespread adoption it’s time to step out of the LLM’s shadow and take credit/blame again.

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#37

Post by sshine »

qprofyeh wrote: post #36

So many comments in here are missing the point. By not crediting and personifying the LLM, one (re)takes full human responsibility over the produced works and stated claims. As a result one won’t become an “agent” for the LLM. The title could have been Don’t blame the LLM. When we first started using LLMs professionally it was fine to hide behind disclaimers. Now with widespread adoption it’s time to step out of the…

This whole discussion is a result of Claude using "Co-authored-by" as advertisement because it massively propagates the Claude logo to GitHub. As an advertisement strategy, this is extremely impressive.

Unfortunately, it conflates what's meant by co-authoring. Because so far, Claude has not claimed sovereignty as an artificial intelligence, so actually, mentally crediting Claude is like crediting Vim or Emacs.

We don't have to think of our tools as being authors just because Anthropic did.

The Co-authored-by had a real meaning related to accountability.

Putting our tool in front of us is like letting our cat drive the car. I mean, it's fine if it sits in our lap with the paws on the wheel wearing sunglasses. Just don't pretend it is the one deciding the direction, taking critical turns. Because when we get pulled over, the cops aren't gonna buy it. And neither is anyone on GitHub. We know Claude is still just a program.

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#38

Post by qprofyeh »

qprofyeh wrote: post #36

So many comments in here are missing the point. By not crediting and personifying the LLM, one (re)takes full human responsibility over the produced works and stated claims. As a result one won’t become an “agent” for the LLM. The title could have been Don’t blame the LLM. When we first started using LLMs professionally it was fine to hide behind disclaimers. Now with widespread adoption it’s time to step out of the…

On a lighter note: it’s perfectly fine to take full credit for caring about a problem.

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#39

Post by antihipocrat »

WCSTombs wrote: post #31
antihipocrat wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I plan a project to build an app and write the full technical specifications and architecture myself, draft data structures, and even provide logic suggestions, and then hand it over to a team of humans to implement - it is at least my teams work. A case can be made that it still primarily my own work (no one expresses much issue with the title: Sid Meier's Civilization as an example). If I have a large amount of…

I don't understand this rebuttal at all. There is a huge difference between having an idea and implementing it yourself, and handing your idea (plus suggestions and data structures or whatever) to other people to implement. In the latter case, the team completing the project gets a lot of credit for the work. That has certainly been the case everywhere I've worked, and I wouldn't have it any other way, even in cases…

So are you saying we should have a credits doc for all major contributors to all software and hardware products, both human and LLM? I'd agree with that, this is not available at the moment for the most popular and profitable products in use currently.

Re: Don't credit the LLM

#40

Post by gumpu »

You are the author of something created by an LLM in the same way you are the winner of a chess game while using a chess engine to make the moves.
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