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PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

kotaku.com

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Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#11

Post by mrandish »

If you look into the arcane architecture of the Playstation 3 console you quickly gain an appreciation for just how impressive the RPCS3 emulator is. PS3 is definitely one of hardest emulation targets, so it's wild they have the majority of the library working (with enhancements like upscaling and higher frame rates on many of the titles).

I guess it's nice people want to help and AI assisted coding can be fine but I can't imagine submitting a PR to a high-profile, much-revered project like that without reviewing and thoroughly testing it myself.

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#12

Post by Panzer04 »

nlh wrote: post #10

I’ve read so many stories like this that I’ve actually gotten scared of making PRs open source projects. There’s one in particular where a feature I really wanted didn’t exist, so I forked and had Codex 5.5 assist with building the feature on my local version. It works perfectly. My life has been improved in being able to have this feature now. Normally I’d want to share it back with the community so others can benef…

If you're upfront about the provenance and amount of effort that went into it, is there really a problem?

I feel like the issue is people contributing code they don't understand and presenting it as if they do.

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#13

Post by ollien »

jamesu wrote: post #8

We've seen a few takes on this kind of issue, but the solution I liked the best was the linux "developers take full responsibility" approach. The "Assisted-by:" tag was a pretty nice touch too. The article unfortunately feels more like a rant than a good exploration of the problem space.

I've struggled with this "responsibility" take. What does it mean in the context of an open source project? As far as I understand it, the original contributors of bugs are often not the ones fixing them (though they can be). Is it that if you write enough buggy code you get banned as a contributor? Is it that you're not allowed to say Claude ate my homework?

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#14

Post by Barrin92 »

nlh wrote: post #10

I’ve read so many stories like this that I’ve actually gotten scared of making PRs open source projects. There’s one in particular where a feature I really wanted didn’t exist, so I forked and had Codex 5.5 assist with building the feature on my local version. It works perfectly. My life has been improved in being able to have this feature now. Normally I’d want to share it back with the community so others can benef…

>Is this the right outcome?

Yes, if you can't vouch for the quality of the code that is the correct outcome. The long term health and maintainability of an open source project takes precedence over adding another feature. This was the case before repos were flooded with AI slop as well. Virtually no project would have accepted a random code dump if the person submitting it does not understand it because that just means the burden falls on someone else which would very quickly get any software project into big trouble.

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#15

Post by qwrurt »

nlh wrote: post #10

I’ve read so many stories like this that I’ve actually gotten scared of making PRs open source projects. There’s one in particular where a feature I really wanted didn’t exist, so I forked and had Codex 5.5 assist with building the feature on my local version. It works perfectly. My life has been improved in being able to have this feature now. Normally I’d want to share it back with the community so others can benef…

If you don't have time to properly engineer it, then you can't submit. Why would you feel guilty? Others can throw a coin in the laundromat, too, if they are so inclined.

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#16

Post by embedding-shape »

nlh wrote: post #10

I’ve read so many stories like this that I’ve actually gotten scared of making PRs open source projects. There’s one in particular where a feature I really wanted didn’t exist, so I forked and had Codex 5.5 assist with building the feature on my local version. It works perfectly. My life has been improved in being able to have this feature now. Normally I’d want to share it back with the community so others can benef…

[dead]

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#17

Post by magnio »

nlh wrote: post #10

I’ve read so many stories like this that I’ve actually gotten scared of making PRs open source projects. There’s one in particular where a feature I really wanted didn’t exist, so I forked and had Codex 5.5 assist with building the feature on my local version. It works perfectly. My life has been improved in being able to have this feature now. Normally I’d want to share it back with the community so others can benef…

First, you don't have to feel guilty of anything, since forking open source projects to make changes tailored to your use case is as old as open source itself. It is, in fact, the primary benefit of open source.

Second, it is not a given that your change would be accepted regardless of who wrote it. Maybe the feature is too niche for its complexity, maybe it is better implemented with more generality or extensibility that does not make sense for your own use. In those cases, your change might have been rejected upstream, so having it only locally is a perfect fine solution.

Third, if you believe it is actually useful for broader users, open an issue requesting that feature, and say LLM implemented it in an hour. Then the maintainers can prompt their own LLM to implement it with ease, or do whatever they want with their project.

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#18

Post by hsbauauvhabzb »

MBCook wrote: post #5

It’s starting to feel like we may need to go back to the model where you need to be invited to be able to submit code or PRs. The barrier is just too low now for popular projects.

I think some sort of reputation score would make more sense, assuming it’s possible to design one that can’t be easily faked

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#19

Post by greenknight »

_JoRo wrote: post #6

I'm curious what percentage of PRs are just the AI blindly writing code and submitting a PR without testing, and which have at least been locally tested to some degree. Any OS maintainers have any insights on this?

Thats the thing, what if the codebases had CLAUDE.md / AGENTS.md files, which clearly dictated that

A) tests need to pass

B) anything you write needs tests

C) the code quality must adhere to these standards

etc.etc.... Helping the LLMs that people Vibe code with, produce better quality results.

By not having these in place, it means people who want to help out, cant. because htey dont understand whats going on.

adding stuff to these files, woudl allow developers to give guidelines / guardrails for developement using these agents.

Should the barrier of entry be someone who knows how to code? or should the barrier of entry be someone who is motivated to help with open-source software.

Re: PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs

#20

Post by koolba »

_JoRo wrote: post #6

I'm curious what percentage of PRs are just the AI blindly writing code and submitting a PR without testing, and which have at least been locally tested to some degree. Any OS maintainers have any insights on this?

> … and submitting a PR without testing, and which have at least been locally tested to some degree.

There’s no need to test the PR when you already asked the AI to not make any mistakes.

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