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Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

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Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#431

Post by [deleted] »

a1o wrote: post #284
Loughla wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. The original authors have no idea what their agents are writing, these are mostly badly quality models (people doing this are not only cutting corners, but also using the less amount of money/tokens to do so). If the agent creates 200, 400 or whate…

[deleted]

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#432

Post by insanitybit »

skydhash wrote: post #396
insanitybit wrote: post #385

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what you're saying, or how it is not what I'm saying? You're giving examples of places to read documentation, and I'm saying that the expectation was that behaviors caused by not checking documentation would be your fault. If that isn't your experience, cool, it was definitely mine when posting on forums online 15-16 years ago.

Why wouldn’t it be? If you were in charge of writing a letter and use words that hinders the purpose of the letter, thus resulting in a flawed communication, wouldn’t it be your fault? Especially when dictionaries are easily available?

Sweet, okay so we're on the same page and the culture is still alive.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#433

Post by a2ff6eeb0 »

timcobb wrote: post #381
a2ff6eeb0 wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, exactly -- when we automated muscles in the industrial revolution, it was fine. Today, we're automating thinking. And, while there are people that still lift weights for fun, it's not needed professionally any more. I think we'll end up in the same place with thinking -- education is probably going to be a hobby, not a requirement.

I bet education will be more important than ever. Prestige, status etc to distinguish yourself. "Taste is all that's left," as someone said here.

I suppose, thought I don't imagine it's going to be so necessary to learn things. Maybe education will be about being impressive in person?

Taste also feels easy enough to automate. I'm not sure why anyone thinks it's harder than anything else.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#434

Post by b112 »

lrvick wrote: post #366
b112 wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Nada. Wrong. With compilers, you still had to think in depth about the code, write it, develop and maintain muscle memory, understand what you were doing. Many are not doing any of that, and coding is a skill you need to constantly practice.

> Many are not doing any of that I do. Most people sucked at programming before AI and they still suck after it. Who cares what "many" do. We as individuals can demand higher bars from ourselves and our teams. AI can increase that bar or lower it depending on how it is used.

And yet, you're in a thread discussing the people who don't look at llm output. And where you tried to claim that assembly -> compiled language, is the same abstraction as coding -> not even looking at LLM output.

And then after I replied, edited your comment to change that context a bit.

So as for ypur original assertion, in this subthread, no... not even remotely the same.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#435

Post by inigyou »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #429
inigyou wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly as close as asking for it after the fact. Reasoning traces have no relation to the reasons LLMs actually do things, except that they may do things because the reasoning trace says they should.

It's exactly as close except when it isn't?

Yes, and when it isn't is a very specific very limited case that has no relation to the one being discussed.

The fact that some course of action was previously mentioned in a reasoning trace, or any other context, makes it more likely to be performed. It has nothing to do with the reason that it was mentioned in the reasoning trace.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#436

Post by swingandamiss »

0xpgm wrote: post #163
swingandamiss wrote: post #131

Good. AI is a game changer. It's like having an expert sitting next to you at all times. It's understandable why all these experts who want to gatekeep don't like AI, but ultimately, AI will win out, it's just too good.

Experts don't want to 'gatekeep'. Experts have been producing FOSS for the benefits of everyone, and liberally answering questions on mailing lists, stack overflow etc for free. Experts have been badly bitten by poorly written and badly architected software, lost their hairs trying to figure out bugs and poor design. They recognize the first version of a piece of software is only a miniscule percentage of the work an…

Yeah but only those experts could do that. Now average people can do what experts were doing, and the experts don't like that. They want to be unique. Same concept as "I knew that song before it was popular on the radio"

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#437

Post by blackqueeriroh »

1718627440 wrote: post #278
Loughla wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

It's a well-known trope, that it's harder to read code than to write it, and review is more complicated than to read it, so I do not understand what you want to imply?

Maybe it is for people who have written code all their lives, but as someone who started with reading code and has read far more code than I’ve ever written, reading code is WAY easier for me.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#438

Post by blackqueeriroh »

Retric wrote: post #302
lokar wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried to nod a bit to the inconsistency. Some projects clearly lost patience with imperfect contributions long ago. But many were still pretty supportive. This dynamic also plays out in many companies. I see a lot of posts from mid to sr engineers frustrated with plummeting code quality and unsure how to manage the reviews. They are increasingly pulling away from the idea that they should mentor people to do better…

The correct response to irresponsible AI use in the workplace is maintaining standards and rejecting poor quality. Performance improvement plans as a fair warning followed by firing people works for incompetence or laziness, AI doesn’t change anything. I’ll admit I’ve seen a spike in negative performance reviews but this is the new normal people will adapt.

It’s almost like late-stage capitalism isn’t built to support mentorship and education and enabling human improvement!

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#439

Post by pyreko »

newswasboring wrote: post #362
a1o wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. The original authors have no idea what their agents are writing, these are mostly badly quality models (people doing this are not only cutting corners, but also using the less amount of money/tokens to do so). If the agent creates 200, 400 or whate…

> Nope, most of the PRs are authored entirely by agents with people instructing them to “pr famous projects in my name to increase my GitHub profile value or “hire ability”. I've heard this in a lot of places, don't have a way to verify this in action. Do you have any citation or just gut feel (still valid but less useful for me).

Anecdotally, as someone who's been starting to get more and more agent-only/driven PRs, a good amount of the time it's by an account with little to no activity until one day they suddenly start doing 50-100+ PRs a _day_ on entirely unrelated projects... you can kind of guess what they're doing.

As for motive, it probably varies, though some will loudly put that they're some agent manager or something with lots of contributions, so you can guess their motivations there.

In other cases, these are instrad brand-new accounts which is a related but I guess slightly different story... not gonna say these are spam bot accounts being juiced with fake activity but well...

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#440

Post by lokar »

thayne wrote: post #345
moring wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced it blows up. It might also end up placing a larger burden on contributors, and especially first-time contributors, to provide concise, high-quality documentation that justifies their contribution. I'm thinking of something like: Explain, in at most 300 characters, why we should merge your change, or at least why we should invest the time to read a longer explanation (somethings things ARE complex).…

That doesn't really solve the problem. I've gotten PRs that do do an adequate job of explaining why why something should be implemented. Then I look at the code and it doesn't fully solve the problem, or it does so in a way that will obviously break something else.

A colleague once setup a PR description template that asked for short sections like:

- Why is this change needed (big picture)

- Why are you doing it this way (small picture)

- What are the trade-offs you made for this approach

- How do you know this is correct, that it works the way you think it does?

- What other changes or approaches does committing to this way block in the future?

etc. If you had actually thought through what you were doing, it was a few min to fill it all out. People were just on auto-pilot really struggled.

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