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We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

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Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#141

Post by troupo »

jermaustin1 wrote: post #62
softwaredoug wrote: post #11

Anyone else feel like we're cresting the LLM coding hype curve? Like a recognition that there's value there, but we're passing the frothing-at-the-mouth stage of replacing all software engineers?

I've been skeptical about LLMs being able to replace humans in their current state (which has gotten marginally better in the last 18 months), but let us not forget that GPT-3.5 (the first truly useful LLM) was only 3 years ago. We aren't even 10 years out from the initial papers about GPTs.

Why are you assuming exponential or even linear growth/improvement?

E.g. OpenAI went from "AGI has been achieved internally" to lying with graphs (where they cut off graphs at 50% or 70% to present minor improvements as breakthroughs).

The growth can easily be logarithmic

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#142

Post by troupo »

catigula wrote: post #98
Larrikin wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Useful if used well as a thought has gone from meaning a replace all developers machine to a fresh out of college junior with perfect memory bot to a will save a little typing if you type out all of your thoughts and baby sit it text box. I get value from it everyday like a lawyer gets value from LexisNexis. I look forward to the vibe coded slop era like a real lawyer looks forward to a defendant with no actual legal…

The trajectory is a replace all developers trajectory, you're just in the middle of the curve wondering why you're not at the end of it. The funny thing is you're clearly within the hyperbolic pattern that I've described. It could plateau, but denying that you're there is incorrect.

> you're just in the middle of the curve wondering why you're not at the end of it.

You assume the curve is exponential.

We assume the curve is logarithmic.

We are not the same

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#143

Post by crote »

aleph_minus_one wrote: post #134
andy99 wrote: post #69

This is a problem everywhere now, and not just in code. It now takes zero effort to produce something, whether code or a work plan or “deep research” and then lob it over the fence, expecting people to review and act upon it. It’s an extension of the asymmetric bullshit principle IMO, and I think now all workplaces / projects need norms about this.

> This is a problem everywhere now, and not just in code. It now takes zero effort to produce something, whether code or a work plan or “deep research” and then lob it over the fence, expecting people to review and act upon it. Where is the problem? If I don't have the time to review a PR, I simply reject it. Or if I am flooded in PRs, I only take those from people from which I know that their PRs are of high quality…

You're still getting DDoSed. If you only accept PRs from pre-vetted people you'll inevitably be left with zero contributors: people naturally leave over time, so in order to maintain a healthy ecosystem you need to accept some newcomers.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#144

Post by crote »

mwigdahl wrote: post #93
jandrese wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When people talk about the “AI bubble popping” this is what they mean. It is clear that AI will remain useful, but the “singularity is nigh” hype is faltering and the company valuations based on perpetual exponential improvement are just not realistic. Worse, the marginal improvements are coming at ever higher resource requirements with each generation, which puts a soft cap on how good an AI can be and still be econ…

What are you basing that on? Haiku 4.5 just came out and beats Sonnet 4 at a third the cost. GPT-5 and GPT-5-codex are significantly cheaper than the o-series full models from OpenAI, but outperform them. I won't get into whether the improvements we're seeing are marginal or not, but whether or not that's the case, these examples clearly show you can get improved performance with decreasing resource cost as technique…

> I won't get into whether the improvements we're seeing are marginal or not

But that's exactly the problem!

Right now, AI performs poorly enough that only a small fraction of users is willing to pay money for it, and (despite tech companies constantly shoving it in everyone's face) a large portion of the user base doesn't even want to adopt it for free.

You can't spend hundreds of billions of dollars on marginal improvements in the hope that it'll hopefully eventually become good enough for widespread adoption. Nobody is going to give OpenAI a trillion dollars to grow their user base 50x over the next 15 years. They are going to need to show significant improvements - and soon, or the bubble will pop.

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#145

Post by mexicocitinluez »

r4victor wrote: post #130

So far I prefer the Hashimoto's solution to this that "AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44976568 I use it like this: If a PR is LLM-generated, you as a maintainer either merge it if it's good or close if it's not. If it's human-written, you may spend some time reviewing the code and iterating on the PR as you used to. Saves your time without discarding LLM PRs comp…

But what does LLM-generated mean? What if I use CoPilot for completions? Is that considered "AI generated"? What if I grab the code from Claude, and update greater than 50%. Am I now taking ownership of it as my code?

It's like the ship of theseus

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#146

Post by visarga »

javier123454321 wrote: post #64
softwaredoug wrote: post #11

Anyone else feel like we're cresting the LLM coding hype curve? Like a recognition that there's value there, but we're passing the frothing-at-the-mouth stage of replacing all software engineers?

I was extremely skeptical at the beginning, and therefore critical of what was possible as my default stance. Despite all that, the latest iterations of cli agents which attach to LSPs and scan codebase context have been surprising me in a positive direction. I've given them tasks that require understanding the project structure and they've been able to do so. Therefore, for me my trajectory has been from skeptic to…

There are 3 parts of the process the AI agent can't do - the start, the middle and the end :) No, really, they need humans to identify tasks worth working on, then guide the model during development and providing iterative feedback, and in the end we incur the outcomes, good or bad. We are the consequence sinks, we take the costs and risks on ourselves. LLMs have no accountability.

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#147

Post by 1gn15 »

felipeerias wrote: post #34
andai wrote: post #29

>That said, there is a trend among many developers of banning AI. Some go so far as to say “AI not welcome here” find another project. >This feels extremely counterproductive and fundamentally unenforceable to me. Much of the code AI generates is indistinguishable from human code anyway. You can usually tell a prototype that is pretending to be a human PR, but a real PR a human makes with AI assistance can be indisti…

Personally, I would not contribute to a project that forced me to lie. And from the point of view of the maintainers, it seems a terrible idea to set up rules with the expectation that they will be broken.

I know, right. It's like setting up rules saying "you can't use IDE autocomplete" or "you can't code with background music because that distracts you from bugs". If the final result is indistinguishable, I find it perfectly acceptable to lie. Rules are just words, after all, especially if it's completely unenforceable.

Or, the decentralized, no rulers solution: clone the repo on your own website and put your patches there instead.

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#148

Post by 1gn15 »

softskunk wrote: post #95
Toby1VC wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There’s nothing wrong with judgment. Judging someone’s character based on whether they use generative “AI” is a valid practice. You may not like being judged, but that’s another matter entirely. You and I know that using AI is a metric to consider when judging ability and quality. The difference is that it's not judgment but a broadcast, announcement. In this case a snotty one from Discourse. I mention that it linge…

So people will be more likely to think twice before using Cursor, Copilot et al? Good. I think they should. Your comparison to torture and sabotage is unfounded to the point of being simply bizarre.

I think humans should use AI as much as possible. Just putting that thought out there, so people are less likely to think twice.

Re: We need a clearer framework for AI-assisted contributions to open source

#149

Post by andrewflnr »

gordonhart wrote: post #96

> As engineers it is our role to properly label our changes. I've found myself wanting line-level blame for LLMs. If my teammate committed something that was written directly by Claude Code, it's more useful to me to know that than to have the blame assigned to the human through the squash+merge PR process. Ultimately somebody needs to be on the hook. But if my teammate doesn't understand it any better than I do, I'd…

If your teammate doesn't understand it, they shouldn't have committed it. This isn't a "dance", it's basic responsibility for your actions.
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