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Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

lwn.net

201–210 of 308 posts

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

#201

Good decision. The two extremes of this decision are both bad. On one hand the status quo of a lot of slop demanding attention from busy people is just not sustainable and something has to change. But throwing out the baby with the bath water by just blanket banning all forms of AI contributions is not a long term sustainable solution. It's a stop gap solution at best. And one that would be challenged more and more a…

> The right way might be to fight AI slop with AI enforced guard rails.

Whenever I you tried to develop using guardrails with LLMs, I found out that they are much better at ,,cheating'' than a human: getting around the guardrails by creating the ugliest hacks around them.

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

#202
post #199
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What tool did you use ? I routinely generate applications for my personal use using OpenCode + Claude Sonnet/Opus. Yesterday I generated an app for my son to learn multiplication tables using spaced repetition algorithm and score keeping. It took me like 5 minutes. Of course if you use ChatGPT it will not work but there is no way Claude Code/Open Code with any modern model isn't able to generate a one hundred line sc…

Are we still doing the "your fault for not using this other model" thing? It's a bit of a tired trope at this point.

I was asking which tool, not which, not which model.

For the same model, you can just have it generate dad jokes or use it in a tool like OpenCode or Cursor or Zed or Cline or … and make it program complex things.

If I use Claude Sonnet on duck.ai I will have hard time generating something interesting. The same model in OpenCode does all my programming work.

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

#203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think any side on the issue of gun ownership has ever claimed that statement is false, so I'm not sure what your point is.

The point is thst this is a common pro-gun argument to deflect from the fact that making guns harder to own does in fact reduce gun violence. Which is how much of the rest of the world works. But post Sandy Hook, it's clear which side prevailed in this argument.

Except it seems to be arguing in the exact opposite direction, and about the other side of the problem?

Those in favor of gun control aren't trying to lower human responsibility, they're trying to place stricter limits on the guns than the status quo. Those against gun control are trying to loosen limits on the guns.

Here this person is proposing making individual responsibility stricter compared than what it is today. And they're not arguing for loosening limits on the tech either.

Isn't that practically the opposite of your analogy?

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

#204
Treat this as person's own contribution. If the quality is bad, means the person has allowed it, or the person's quality of work is bad, and it doesn't matter whether they produced it or AI did. So in both cases they'd deserve a rejection of their PR. The only downside is that it takes away precious reviewer energy and time.

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

#206

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…

It's great that LLMs helped you but do you recognize that they are trained on thousands, perhaps millions of lifetimes of human work without the consent of the original authors and often quite explicitly against their will and their chosen license?

These people (myself included) made their work available free of charge under some very friendly conditions such as being credited or sharing work built upon theirs under the same license. Now we are being shit on because obscenely rich people think we are no longer relevant and that they can get away with it.

What happens to you if, say 2 years down the line, "AI" or AI has absorbed all your knowledge and can do all of your work instead of you better and faster? Do you imagine you'll keep paying for AI and having it work for you or can you also imagine a future where AI companies decide to cut out the middle-man (you) and take over your customers directly?

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

#208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 co…

> No, it's not that simple. AI generated code isn't owned by anyone, it can't be copyrighted, so it cannot be licensed. There is no way to reliably identify code as AI-generated, unless it is explicitly labelled so. Good code produced by AI is not different from the good code produced by software engineer, so copyright is the last thing I would be worried about. Especially given the fact that reviewing all pull reque…

At least with LLM providers, they have your prompts and output, and if they wanted to, they could identify what code was AI generated or not.

Maybe they can be subpoenaed, maybe they can sell the data to parties who care like legal teams, maybe they can make it service anyone can plug a GitHub repo into, etc.

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

#209
post #156
post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> high value contributors won't follow it High-value contributors follow the rules and social mores of the community they are contributing to. If they intentionally deceive others, they are not high-value.

Ah, the no true Scotsman theory.

Arguing that "doesn't secretly, sneakily break project rules" is an essential component of a quality contributor isn't a "no true scotsman" argument, it's a statement about qualifications

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

#210

Does Debian have a rule that forbids (or a taboo that proscribes) contributors passing off other people’s work as their own? I could believe that such a rule is implied rather than written down. The GR could be about writing it down, and it would surely cover the case of code that came directly from a model. Even if we don’t consider a model to be another person it is certainly not the contributor’s own work. (If any…

> Does Debian have a rule that forbids (or a taboo that proscribes) contributors passing off other people’s work as their own? I could believe that such a rule is implied rather than written down.

It’s implied because it’s illegal (infringes on the original author’s rights). Of course, LLMs aren’t people.

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