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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

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Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#111

Post by echelon »

sysmax wrote: post #106

I wish people would make distinction regarding the size/scope of the AI-generated parts. Like with video copyright laws, where a 5-second clip from a copyrighted movie is usually considered fair use and not frowned upon. Because for projects like QEMU, current AI models can actually do mind-boggling stuff. You can give it a PDF describing an instruction set, and it will generate you wrapper classes for emulating part…

Qemu can make the choice to stay in the "stone age" if they want. Contributors who prefer AI assistance can spend their time elsewhere.

It might actually be prudent for some (perhaps many foundational) OSS projects to reject AI until the full legal case law precedent has been established. If they begin taking contributions and we find out later that courts find this is in violation of some third party's copyright (as shocking as that outcome may seem), that puts these projects in jeopardy. And they certainly do not have the funding or bandwidth to avoid litigation. Or to handle a complete rollback to pre-AI background states.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#112

Post by 762236 »

sysmax wrote: post #106

I wish people would make distinction regarding the size/scope of the AI-generated parts. Like with video copyright laws, where a 5-second clip from a copyrighted movie is usually considered fair use and not frowned upon. Because for projects like QEMU, current AI models can actually do mind-boggling stuff. You can give it a PDF describing an instruction set, and it will generate you wrapper classes for emulating part…

It sounds like you're saying someone could rewrite Qemu on their own, with the help of AI. That would be pretty funny.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#113

Post by colechristensen »

andy99 wrote: post #41
compton93 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to review code the author doesn't understand This really bothers me. I've had people ask me to do some task except they get AI to provide instructions on how to do the task and send me the instructions, rather than saying "Hey can you please do X". It's insulting.

Had someone higher up ask about something in my area of expertise. I said I didn't think is was possible, he followed up with a chatGPT conversation he had where it "gave him some ideas that we could use as an approach", as if that was some useful insight. This is the same people that think that "learning to code" is a translation issue they don't have time for as opposed to experience they don't have.

People keep asking me if AI is going to take my job and recent experience shows that it very much is not. AI is great for being mostly correct and then giving someone without enough context a mostly correct way to shoot themselves in the foot.

AI further encourages the problem in DevOps/Systems Engineering/SRE where someone comes to you and says "hey can you do this for me" having come up with the solution instead of giving you the problem "hey can you help me accomplish this"... AI gives them solutions which is more steps away to detangle into what really needs to be done.

AI has knowledge, but it doesn't have taste. Especially when it doesn't have all of the context a person with experience, it just has bad taste in solutions or just the absence of taste but with the additional problem that it makes it much easier for people to do things.

Permissions on what people have access to read and permission to change is now going to have to be more restricted because not only are we dealing with folks who have limited experience with permissions, now we have them empowered by AI to do more things which are less advisable.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#114

Post by XorNot »

AJ007 wrote: post #63
benlivengood wrote: post #35

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

A reasonable conclusion about this would simply be that the developers are saying "we're not merging anything which you can't explain".

Which is entirely reasonable. The trend of people say, on HN saying "I asked an LLM and this is what it said..." is infuriating.

It's just an upfront declaration that if your answer to something is "it's what Claude thinks" then it's not getting merged.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#115

Post by WD-42 »

alganet wrote: post #101
viraptor wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's happening slowly all around. It's not obvious because people producing high quality stuff have no incentive at all to mark their changes as AI-generated. But there are also local tools generated faster than you could adjust existing tools to do what you want. I'm running 3 things now just for myself that I generated from scratch instead of trying to send feature requests to existing apps I can buy. It's only goi…

Can you show these 3 things to us?

For some reason these fully functional ai generated projects that the authors vibe out while playing guitar and clipping their toenails are never open source.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#117

Post by teeray »

luispauloml wrote: post #102
Aeolun wrote: post #93

This seems absolutely impossible to enforce. All my editors give me AI assisted code hints. Zed, cursor, VS code. All of them now show me autocomplete that comes from an LLM. There's absolutely no distinction between that code, and code that I've typed out myself. It's like complaining that I may have no legal right to submit my stick figure because I potentially copied it from the drawing of another stick figure. I'…

> I'm firmly convinced that these policies are only written to have plausible deniability when stuff with generated code gets inevitably submitted anyway. Of course it is. And nobody said otherwise, because that is explicitly stated on the commit message: [...] More broadly there is, as yet, no broad consensus on the licensing implications of code generators trained on inputs under a wide variety of licenses And in t…

It’s like the seemingly-confusing gates passing through customs that say “nothing to declare” when you’ve already made your declarations. Walking through that gate is a conscious act that places culpability on you, so you can’t simply say “oh, I forgot” or something.

The thinking here is probably similar: if AI-generated code becomes poisonous and is detected in a project, the DCO could allow shedding liability onto the contributor that said it wasn’t AI-generated.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#118

Post by Filligree »

XorNot wrote: post #114
AJ007 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

A reasonable conclusion about this would simply be that the developers are saying "we're not merging anything which you can't explain". Which is entirely reasonable. The trend of people say, on HN saying "I asked an LLM and this is what it said..." is infuriating. It's just an upfront declaration that if your answer to something is "it's what Claude thinks" then it's not getting merged.

That’s not what the policy says, however. You could be the world’s most honest person, using Claude only to generate code you described to it in detail and fully understand, and would still be forbidden.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#119

Post by pretoriusdre »

AI generated code is generally pretty good and incredibly fast.

Seeing this new phenomenon must be difficult for those people who have spent a long time perfecting their craft. Essentially, they might feel that their skillsets are being undermined. It would be especially hard for people who associate a lot of their self-identity with their job.

Being a purist is noble, but I think that this stance is foolish. Essentially, people who chose not to use AI code tools will be overtaken by the people who do. That's the unfortunate reality.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#120

Post by dotancohen »

tines wrote: post #67
candiddevmike wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a boring dystopia where everyone is given hallucinated tasks from LLMs that may in some crazy way be feasible but aren't, and you can't argue that they're impossible without being fired since leadership lacks critical thinking.

Reminds me of the wonderful skit, The Expert: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKorP55Aqvg

That is incredibly accurate - I used to be at meetings like that monthly. Please submit this as an HN discussion.
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