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Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

blog.rust-lang.org

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Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#51

Post by seanhunter »

incrudible wrote: post #8
seanhunter wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and I think the reasons set out in TFA are interesting, which on my reading are: 1) Code is the least interesting bit in some ways - they’re trying to build not only rust but a community of experts around rust which is able to maintain and improve it in the long term and the authors of prs need to understand the code deeply and show a willingness to be part of that long run. Llm-generated code even if it looks p…

No codebase worth being deeply invested in is deeply understood by anyone, including the original authors. The eternal maintenance argument is tiresome. If there is a problem in need of fixing, you figure it out, you do not depend on some author being available, and LLMs are exceptionally helpful in this regard as well. Then, if the LLM has trouble figuring out, so will another human. It is a code smell.

Strongly disagree. The obvious counterexample is in the foss world is ffmpeg, which I would submit is deeply understood by Fabrice Bellard. As a sibling points out, there are also various worthwhile single author projects.

Outside the world of foss there are for example multiple games that are highly respected that were all entirely or largely developed by a single developer. Rimworld, Songs of Syx, Dwarf Fortress, Ostranauts and many others. In a proprietary context I have myself deeply understood codebases and worked with others who have also.

That being said, you are arguing against a straw man that neither I nor the rust article propose. They are not saying maintainers need to understand all the code they are saying the person submitting a pr needs to deeply understand that pr. Why? Because they want to build a community who deeply understand various aspects of rust so when things need maintenance there are experts around who even if they don’t know a particular piece are invested in the success of the project and know enough to get up the curve and fix whatever needs to be fixed.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#52

Post by ChrisRR »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #35
weli wrote: post #32

I really dislike every kind of rule that says something along the lines "if it's LLM generated you must self-disclose otherwise it is against the rules". Because this quickly leads to witch hunting and easy persecution of IC's under the pretense "it looks generated by an LLM" or they just investigate you and put you on cooldown from being able to contribute while they check for signs of "LLM-generated code". It's no…

I don't disagree with you. I too hate disclosing LLM usage. I hate giving free advertising to trillion dollar corporations. There's also the fact people will probably look down on me for it and assume I'm incompetent because I used an LLM, and I've actually ended up sitting on reviewed and tested patches to open source projects because of this. However, we should be polite and respect their house rules. They are bein…

> There's also the fact people will probably look down on me for it and assume I'm incompetent because I used an LLM

I've seen so many arguments (mainly from non-developers) claiming that anyone who uses an llm to generate code doesn't know how to program. They can't understand the difference between people using an LLM to blindly churn out code, and people developing with an LLM to generate the boring bits

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#53

Post by IsTom »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #50
m4xp wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclosure can't go away, i dont care if you say which model you used. But i think it's within any project rights to not accept any llm assisted contributions.

The disclosure is fine, it's this stigma surrounding LLMs that is a problem.

We'll yet see where the wind blows, but there's a real possibility of copyright issues for machine-generated code down the line.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#54

Post by weli »

winstonwinston wrote: post #48
weli wrote: post #32

I really dislike every kind of rule that says something along the lines "if it's LLM generated you must self-disclose otherwise it is against the rules". Because this quickly leads to witch hunting and easy persecution of IC's under the pretense "it looks generated by an LLM" or they just investigate you and put you on cooldown from being able to contribute while they check for signs of "LLM-generated code". It's no…

You can’t be upset because they want to know the truth, seriously. When a project has concerns about generated code, it is for a reason.

I'm not upset because LLM disclosure is mandatory. I'm upset about the consequences this has and how easy this makes for people to gatekeep new IC's under false and difficult to prove pretenses.

"This looks like AI, closed". And you as a new IC with no connections, no community visibility have no recourse to fight back against it. Anti-ai people love boasting about humans > systems and forget about those humans that will surely be negatively affected by this, even if low number.

If you are a new programmer who is just learning and spend time creating a PR for a project you have a lot of respect for and the first interaction is someone falsely accuses you of using LLM's then closes your PR you've now removed someone who could have genuinely grown into your community from ever joining.

Not only that but since now you are by default a suspect of having used an LLM (and you need to prove you didn't use one) why even bother not using one? You are going to get accused of it either way.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#55

Post by jynelson »

weli wrote: post #54
winstonwinston wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can’t be upset because they want to know the truth, seriously. When a project has concerns about generated code, it is for a reason.

I'm not upset because LLM disclosure is mandatory. I'm upset about the consequences this has and how easy this makes for people to gatekeep new IC's under false and difficult to prove pretenses. "This looks like AI, closed". And you as a new IC with no connections, no community visibility have no recourse to fight back against it. Anti-ai people love boasting about humans > systems and forget about those humans that…

that is not what the policy says. it says "authors must disclose", "reviewers don't need to play detective", and "if a reviewer is not sure whether a post is LLM-created they should handle it privately, consulting mods". and the recourse is "go to this zulip channel", because closing a PR isn't the same as geting banned.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#56

Post by trelane »

nasso_dev wrote: post #42
weli wrote: post #32

I really dislike every kind of rule that says something along the lines "if it's LLM generated you must self-disclose otherwise it is against the rules". Because this quickly leads to witch hunting and easy persecution of IC's under the pretense "it looks generated by an LLM" or they just investigate you and put you on cooldown from being able to contribute while they check for signs of "LLM-generated code". It's no…

imho disclosing use of LLMs is just being transparent and honest. is it that hard? deliberately hiding this should absolutely get you in trouble, because trust is the most important thing to have in open-source as you probably have seen in TFA, the policy does not ban LLM usage. its just asking for disclosure so that maintainers know how much effort was put in a PR and, please, open-source maintainers owe us nothing.…

> disclosing use of LLMs is just being transparent and honest. is it that hard?

Your assertion here is irrelevant to the poster's point.

You're focused on the "happy path:" everyone has perfect information and judges correctly. If the submitter used AI, they say so and the commenters on the PR agree. If the submitter did not use AI, they don't say they used AI, and the commenters on the PR agree. This is the diagonal elements on the "used AI" confusion matrix.

The commenter is pointing out that information and judgment are not perfect and they're concerned about the off-diagonal elements of the confusion matrix. Especially the "Didn't use AI, but some commenters believe that they did" element.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#57

Post by weli »

jynelson wrote: post #55
weli wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not upset because LLM disclosure is mandatory. I'm upset about the consequences this has and how easy this makes for people to gatekeep new IC's under false and difficult to prove pretenses. "This looks like AI, closed". And you as a new IC with no connections, no community visibility have no recourse to fight back against it. Anti-ai people love boasting about humans > systems and forget about those humans that…

that is not what the policy says. it says "authors must disclose", "reviewers don't need to play detective", and "if a reviewer is not sure whether a post is LLM-created they should handle it privately, consulting mods". and the recourse is "go to this zulip channel", because closing a PR isn't the same as geting banned.

For the morale of the person who created the PR, closing every PR you make is pretty similar to just being banned

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#58

Post by thunky »

andsoitis wrote: post #2

In a nutshell: It's fine to use LLMs to answer questions, analyze, distill, refine, check, suggest, review. But not to create.

This implies that "create" is the hard part that we should not offload to machines.

But IME all of the other things are the hard part.

So basically it's fine to get the LLM to think for you and give you the answers as long as you understand Rust syntax well enough to type it all out yourself?

This also seems like it will produce worse code, because it's preventing the LLM from doing the easy/boring part that it's good at.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#59

Post by bryanlarsen »

seanhunter wrote: post #51
incrudible wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No codebase worth being deeply invested in is deeply understood by anyone, including the original authors. The eternal maintenance argument is tiresome. If there is a problem in need of fixing, you figure it out, you do not depend on some author being available, and LLMs are exceptionally helpful in this regard as well. Then, if the LLM has trouble figuring out, so will another human. It is a code smell.

Strongly disagree. The obvious counterexample is in the foss world is ffmpeg, which I would submit is deeply understood by Fabrice Bellard. As a sibling points out, there are also various worthwhile single author projects. Outside the world of foss there are for example multiple games that are highly respected that were all entirely or largely developed by a single developer. Rimworld, Songs of Syx, Dwarf Fortress, O…

I have a bunch of single-author projects that I wrote myself that I no longer have a deep understanding of. None are near as large as your references.

Fabrice Bellard is obviously a superhuman, but I expect even he relies on re-analyzing code he previously wrote and has subsequently forgot. This doesn't take him long because he knows his own conventions and proclivities. But I'm confident he doesn't "deeply understand" the entire code base. He has a shallow understanding of the entire code base. He has a deep understanding of crucial parts of it. And he has the ability to quickly re-establish a deep understanding of any piece.

Re: Rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

#60

Post by lukasco »

I think LLM policies which ban usage are ultimately self-defeating. They neatly switch concerns about quality of contributions to concerns about "AI slop". These two things are not the same. But the biggest problem is that they ignore the (unevenly distributed) future.

The future: SWEs will no longer write code by hand. The era of hand coding is over. We only saw that for sure in the last 6 - 9 months. But it's over.

Many coders have not yet made this transition, true, but it's happening regardless. You may not like it, but as a coder, you will not be hired if you refuse these tools. You will look as ridiculous as an accountant that refuses to use spreadsheets.

For now, we're not there yet.

As a profession, we are learning how to deal with the massive influx of review work that occurs because of LLMs. The bottleneck has moved. And as of now, there aren't good answers. But there will be. We will figure it out, like we figured out CI/CD and agile.

So personally, I'd focus my policies much more on dealing with the issues that this new era presents, and how to make LLM contributions work, and I'd avoid banning LLMs.

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