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Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

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Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#161

Post by IshKebab »

sothatsit wrote: post #104
IshKebab wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be the responsibility of the person submitting changes. The problem is AI apparently makes it easy for people to shirk that responsibility.

Trusted contributors using LLMs do not cause this problem though. It is the larger volume of low-effort contributions causing this problem, and those contributors are the most likely to ignore the policies. Therefore, policies restricting AI-use on the basis of avoiding low-quality contributions are probably hurting more than they’re helping.

I'm not sure I agree. If you have a blanket "you must disclose how you use AI" policy it's socially very easy to say "can you disclose how you used AI", and then if they say Claude code wrote it, you can just ignore it, guilt-free.

Without that policy it feels rude to ask, and rude to ignore in case they didn't use AI.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#162

Post by IshKebab »

qsera wrote: post #93
IshKebab wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It should be the responsibility of the person submitting changes. The problem is AI apparently makes it easy for people to shirk that responsibility.

> people to shirk that responsibility. Actually not shrink, but just transfer it to reviewers.

That's what "shirk" means. It wasn't a typo.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#163

Post by heavyset_go »

mr-wendel wrote: post #58

My two cents: I've been coding practically my entire life, but a few years back I sustained a pretty significant and lasting injury to my wrists. As such, I have very little tolerance for typing. It's been quite a problem and made full time work impossible. With the advent of LLMs, AI-autocomplete, and agent-based development workflows, my ability to deliver reliable, high-quality code is restored and (arguably) bett…

For projects, it's also a licensing issue. You don't own the copyright on AI generated code, no one does, so it can't be licensed.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#164

Post by heavyset_go »

ivan_gammel wrote: post #121
mr-wendel wrote: post #58

My two cents: I've been coding practically my entire life, but a few years back I sustained a pretty significant and lasting injury to my wrists. As such, I have very little tolerance for typing. It's been quite a problem and made full time work impossible. With the advent of LLMs, AI-autocomplete, and agent-based development workflows, my ability to deliver reliable, high-quality code is restored and (arguably) bett…

If you sign off the code and put your expertise and reputation behind it, AI becomes just an advanced autocomplete tool and, as such, should not count in “no AI” rules. It’s ok to use it, if that enables you to work.

> If you sign off the code and put your expertise and reputation behind it, AI becomes just an advanced autocomplete tool and, as such, should not count in “no AI” rules.

No, it's not that simple. AI generated code isn't owned by anyone, it can't be copyrighted, so it cannot be licensed.

This matters for open source projects that care about licensing. It should also matter for proprietary code bases, as anyone can copy and distribute "their" AI generated code for any purpose, including to compete with the "owner".

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#166

Post by badsectoracula »

heavyset_go wrote: post #163
mr-wendel wrote: post #58

My two cents: I've been coding practically my entire life, but a few years back I sustained a pretty significant and lasting injury to my wrists. As such, I have very little tolerance for typing. It's been quite a problem and made full time work impossible. With the advent of LLMs, AI-autocomplete, and agent-based development workflows, my ability to deliver reliable, high-quality code is restored and (arguably) bett…

For projects, it's also a licensing issue. You don't own the copyright on AI generated code, no one does, so it can't be licensed.

This isn't an issue of "nobody can use this" but an "everyone can use this", i.e. projects can use AI generated code just fine and they own the copyright to any modifications they do to it.

Think of it like random noise in an image editor: you do own the random pixels since they're generated by the computer, but you can still use them as part of making your art - you do not lose copyright to your art because you used a random noise filter.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#167

Post by pixl97 »

beepbooptheory wrote: post #34
hombre_fatal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "on a long enough timeline", but you already can't tell today in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. I think a lot of anti-LLM opinions just come from interacting with the lowest effort LLM slop and someone not realizing that it's really a problem with a low value person behind it. It's why "no AI allowed" is pointless; high value contributors won't follow it because they know how to use it pro…

But then why have any contributions at all? Like its been years and years now, if all this is true, you'd think there would be more of a paradigm shift? I'm happy I guess waiting for Godot like everyone else, but the shadows are getting a little long now, people are starting to just repeat the same things over and over. Like, I am so tired now, it's causing such messes everywhere. Can all the best things about AI be…

> Where can I go?

Off the internet. Maybe it's just time we all face the public internet is dead.

Maybe a trusted private internet, though that comes with it's own risks and tradeoffs.

Maybe we start doing PRs over mailed USB keys. Anyone with enough interest will do it, but it will cut out the bots. We're back to a 90's sneakernet. Any internet presence may become a read only site telling others how to reach you offline.

The information superhighway died a long time ago. 4chan enlightened me on the power of intelligent stupidity. The machinations of a few smart people could embolden countless stupid people to cause nearly unlimited damage. Social media gathering up the smart and dumb alike allowed bullshit asymmetry to explode onto the scene and burned out anyone with a modicum of intelligence.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#168

Post by LtWorf »

ray023 wrote: post #133

The website is absolutely atrocious, dark mode has pitch-black background with bold 100% white glowing text in foreground, shitty font, way to wide text. Seriously how is lwn.net even still so popular with such an atrocious unreadable ugly website. Well yes I get the irony of asking that on HN (I use an extension to make it better).

They have a settings page where you can set the colours you like… Most people who don't like them just change them to something they like.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#169

Post by LtWorf »

fidorka wrote: post #9
3012846 wrote: post #3

Again you can see which developers are owned by corporations and which are not. There is no free software any longer.

What do you mean?

A number of debian developers do that as part of their full time jobs for canonical, microsoft, and other companies.

Re: Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

#170

Post by serial_dev »

veunes wrote: post #137
sothatsit wrote: post #70

Concerns about the wasting of maintainer’s time, onboarding, or copyright, are of great interest to me from a policy perspective. But I find some of the debate around the quality of AI contributions to be odd. Quality should always be the responsibility of the person submitting changes. Whether a person used LLMs should not be a large concern if someone is acting in good-faith. If they submitted bad code, having used…

The real invariant is responsibility: if you submit a patch, you own it. You should understand it, be able to defend the design choices, and maintain it if needed

Ownership and responsibility are useless when a YouTuber tells it to their million followers that GitHub contributions are valued by companies and this is how you can create a pull request with AI in three minutes, and you get hundred low value noise PRs opened by university students from the other side of the globe. It’s Hacktoberfest on steroids.
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