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The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

simonwillison.net

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Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#111

Post by lelanthran »

baq wrote: post #107
lelanthran wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> OTOH why bother to polish the PR if it won't get accepted anyway? As the Zig maintainer so patiently explained, no amount of "polish" can fix the PR because it is misaligned to the correctness that they require. IOW, that PR is so far off the reservation, unless it is completely rewritten, it won't be accepted.

it could have been rewritten, rewriting PRs is cheap today, but that isn't the question. the question is, would it have been accepted had it met all the quality and engineering standards and full disclosure that it was 90%+ LLM generated?

> it could have been rewritten, rewriting PRs is cheap today, but that isn't the question. the question is, would it have been accepted had it met all the quality and engineering standards and full disclosure that it was 90%+ LLM generated?

In this case it looks like the answer is "Yes"; the PR was not dismissed immediately, it was first examined in great detail!

Why would the maintainer expend effort on something that was going to be rejected anyway?

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#112

Post by kennykartman »

julenx wrote: post #47

The article explains Zig's stance in further detail, but the quoted part on its own caught my attention because my reading of it is rather "pro human communication" instead of "anti-AI".

They're banning all AI though, so it looks pretty much anti-AI to me.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#113

Post by baq »

lelanthran wrote: post #111
baq wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it could have been rewritten, rewriting PRs is cheap today, but that isn't the question. the question is, would it have been accepted had it met all the quality and engineering standards and full disclosure that it was 90%+ LLM generated?

> it could have been rewritten, rewriting PRs is cheap today, but that isn't the question. the question is, would it have been accepted had it met all the quality and engineering standards and full disclosure that it was 90%+ LLM generated? In this case it looks like the answer is "Yes"; the PR was not dismissed immediately, it was first examined in great detail! Why would the maintainer expend effort on something th…

because the policy is clearly 'reject' and yet significant time has been spent - either effort was wasted or policy is at best 'not implemented'.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#114

Post by grayhatter »

lukaslalinsky wrote: post #94

On multiple occasions over the last months, I have been wishing the Zig/ZSF team would use LLMs. I've found many copy&paste errors that simply wouldn't exist if mundane tasks were delegated to a good LLM. It's even in the Zig community, I've seen PRs to some projects I'm interested in boosting how it was all human made, and containing all kinds of trivial logical errors that even the worst LLM would catch.

no cite?

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#115

Post by kay_o »

discreteevent wrote: post #110
feverzsj wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty much sums up the LLM fanbase.

I don't think it's the complete fanbase. However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing. It's a viable way to live and sometimes it's the only way to live. But they have a very loose relationship with truth and reason. Programming was a domain that filtered out those people because they found it hard to succeed at it. LLM's have changed that and it's a huge problem. It's hard to kn…

> However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing

Why are they often so desperate to lie and non-consensually harass others with their vibing rather than be honest about it? Why do they think they are "helping" with hallucinated rubbish that can't even build?

I use LLMs. It is not difficult to: ethically disclose your use, double check all of your work, ensure things compile without errors, not lie to others, not ask it to generate ten paragraphs of rubbish when the answer is one sentence, and respect the project's guidelines. But for so many people this seems like an impossible task.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#116

Post by lelanthran »

baq wrote: post #113
lelanthran wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it could have been rewritten, rewriting PRs is cheap today, but that isn't the question. the question is, would it have been accepted had it met all the quality and engineering standards and full disclosure that it was 90%+ LLM generated? In this case it looks like the answer is "Yes"; the PR was not dismissed immediately, it was first examined in great detail! Why would the maintainer expend effort on something th…

because the policy is clearly 'reject' and yet significant time has been spent - either effort was wasted or policy is at best 'not implemented'.

> either effort was wasted or policy is at best 'not implemented'.

I don't understand this PoV - have you ever come across a policy in any environment that wasn't subject to case-by-case exceptions?

Even in highly regulated environments (banking/fintech, Insurance, Medical, etc), policies are subject to exceptions and exemptions, done on a case-by-case basis.

The notion, in this specific case, that "well they rejected it because of policy" is clearly nonsense and I don't understand why people are pushing this so hard when the explanation of why an exemption can't be made for this specific PR is public, accessible and, I feel, already public knowledge.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#117

Post by ramon156 »

kay_o wrote: post #115
discreteevent wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the complete fanbase. However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing. It's a viable way to live and sometimes it's the only way to live. But they have a very loose relationship with truth and reason. Programming was a domain that filtered out those people because they found it hard to succeed at it. LLM's have changed that and it's a huge problem. It's hard to kn…

> However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing Why are they often so desperate to lie and non-consensually harass others with their vibing rather than be honest about it? Why do they think they are "helping" with hallucinated rubbish that can't even build? I use LLMs. It is not difficult to: ethically disclose your use, double check all of your work, ensure things compile without…

It's the same as cheating in a game. You are given an """advantage""", so lying about it seems like the best option

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#118

Post by vga1 »

irishcoffee wrote: post #102
matwood wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the best AI models are the same or better than the best[1] human developers, what then? We're already at the point talking about best vs. best.

How can AI possibly be better than “the best” when the corpus of training data now includes its own slop in addition to all the code by new devs/lazy devs/bad devs scattered all over the internet? Law of averages applies here.

Because LLM models are obviously much more than the sum of their parts.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#119

Post by drchickensalad »

kay_o wrote: post #115
discreteevent wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the complete fanbase. However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing. It's a viable way to live and sometimes it's the only way to live. But they have a very loose relationship with truth and reason. Programming was a domain that filtered out those people because they found it hard to succeed at it. LLM's have changed that and it's a huge problem. It's hard to kn…

> However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing Why are they often so desperate to lie and non-consensually harass others with their vibing rather than be honest about it? Why do they think they are "helping" with hallucinated rubbish that can't even build? I use LLMs. It is not difficult to: ethically disclose your use, double check all of your work, ensure things compile without…

You're asking why oil doesn't act like water. It's not really an impossible task, it's just not one they agree with.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#120

Post by automatic6131 »

kay_o wrote: post #115
discreteevent wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's the complete fanbase. However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing. It's a viable way to live and sometimes it's the only way to live. But they have a very loose relationship with truth and reason. Programming was a domain that filtered out those people because they found it hard to succeed at it. LLM's have changed that and it's a huge problem. It's hard to kn…

> However, there are lots of people in the world who live their whole life by vibing Why are they often so desperate to lie and non-consensually harass others with their vibing rather than be honest about it? Why do they think they are "helping" with hallucinated rubbish that can't even build? I use LLMs. It is not difficult to: ethically disclose your use, double check all of your work, ensure things compile without…

> Why do they think they are "helping" with hallucinated rubbish that can't even build?

Because they can't tell the difference between what the machine is outputting, and what people have built. All they see is the superficial resemblance (long lines of incomprehensbile code) and the reward that the people writing the code have got, and want that reward too.

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