Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 329 posts

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#211

Post by joelreymont »

mnming wrote: post #168
benterix wrote: post #62

Did these Ocaml maintainers undergo some special course for dealing with difficult people? They show enormous amounts of maturity and patience. I'd just give the offender Torvalds' treatment and block them from the repo, case closed.

I wonder if it's the best outcome? The contributor doesn't seem to have a bad intention, could his energy be redirected more constructively? E.g. encouraging him to split up the PR, make a design proposal etc.

I think it's for me to redo the PR and break it into smaller pieces.

There's value in the PR in that it does not require you to install the separate OxCaml fork from Jane St which doesn't work with all the OCaml packages. Or wasn't when I tried it back in August.

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#212

Post by joelreymont »

jodrellblank wrote: post #131
hypeatei wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's clear some people have had their brain broken by the existence of AI. Some maintainers are definitely too nice, and it's infuriating to see their time get wasted by such delusional people.

> " It's clear some people have had their brain broken by the existence of AI. " The AI wrote code which worked, for a problem the submitter had, which had not been solved by any human for a long time, and there is limited human developer time/interest/funding available for solving it. Dumping a mass of code (and work) onto maintainers without prior discussion is the problem[1]. If they had forked the repo, patched i…

People complaining about AI stealing code may not realize that OxCaml is a fork of the code that AI is modifying. Both forks have the same license and there are people working on both projects.

AI did paste Mark's copyright on all the files for whatever reason but it did not lift the DWARF implementation from OxCaml and paste it into the PR.

The PR wasn't one-shot either. I had to steer it to completion over several days, had one AI review the changes made by the other, etc. The end result is that the code _works_ and does what it says on the tin!

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#213

Post by [deleted] »

mrguyorama wrote: post #194
mnming wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if it's the best outcome? The contributor doesn't seem to have a bad intention, could his energy be redirected more constructively? E.g. encouraging him to split up the PR, make a design proposal etc.

The constructive outcome is the spammer fucks off or learns how to actually code. Lots of people all over the world learn some basics of music in school, or even learn how to play the recorder, but if you mail The Rolling Stones with your "suggestions" you aren't going to get a response and certainly not a response that encourages you to keep spamming them with "better" recommendations. The maintainers of an open sou…

[deleted]

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#214

Post by joelreymont »

spookie wrote: post #209
menaerus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example what exactly was copied? I ask because I took a look into MR and original repo, and the conclusion is that the tool only copy-pasted the copyright header but not the code. So I am still wondering - what's wrong with that (it's a silly mistake even a human can make), and where is the copyright infringement everyone is talking about?

None of that matters. The header is there, in writing, and discussed in the PR. It is acknowledged by both parties and the author gives a clumsy response for its existence. The PR is simply tainted by this alone, not to mention other pain points. You may not consider this problematic. But maintainers of this project sure do, given this was one of the immediate concerns of theirs.

OxCaml is a fork of OCaml, they have the same license.

I wasn't able to find any chunks of code copied wholesale from OxCaml which already has a DWARF implementation.

All that code wasn't written by Mark, AI just decided to paste his copyright all over.

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#215

Post by tsimionescu »

kreetx wrote: post #30
ares623 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what’s stopping the author from maintaining their own fork i wonder?

Nothing! Another question though when reading his blog: is he himself full AI? as in, not even a human writing those blog posts. Reads a bit like that.

Funnily enough, people have been asking themselves this question about this author for at least 17 years!

https://old.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/674d1/joel_rey...

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#216

Post by menaerus »

DrammBA wrote: post #206
menaerus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example what exactly was copied? I ask because I took a look into MR and original repo, and the conclusion is that the tool only copy-pasted the copyright header but not the code. So I am still wondering - what's wrong with that (it's a silly mistake even a human can make), and where is the copyright infringement everyone is talking about?

> copy-past[ing] the copyright header but not the code [is] a silly mistake even a human can make Do you mind showing me some examples of that? That seems so implausible to me Just for reference, here's another example of AI adding phantom contributors and the human just ignoring it or not even noticing: https://github.com/auth0/nextjs-auth0/issues/2432

> Do you mind showing me some examples of that? That seems so implausible to me

What's so special about it that I need to show you the example?

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#217

Post by joelreymont »

neuralkoi wrote: post #188

This guy's resume is quite something to behold: 1) Slummed it through the ranks of various Wall Street banks [1] 2) Became the Director of Prime Brokerage Technology at Deutsche Bank in 1999 [2] 3) Went through venture capital round in 2000 and in 9 months built a company valued at over 1,000,000 USD [0] 4) Sold license to Electronic Arts (EA) to power EA World Series of Poker (WSOP). [3] 5) Wrote, but had to cancel…

I'm real.

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#218

Post by menaerus »

spookie wrote: post #209
menaerus wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you give an example what exactly was copied? I ask because I took a look into MR and original repo, and the conclusion is that the tool only copy-pasted the copyright header but not the code. So I am still wondering - what's wrong with that (it's a silly mistake even a human can make), and where is the copyright infringement everyone is talking about?

None of that matters. The header is there, in writing, and discussed in the PR. It is acknowledged by both parties and the author gives a clumsy response for its existence. The PR is simply tainted by this alone, not to mention other pain points. You may not consider this problematic. But maintainers of this project sure do, given this was one of the immediate concerns of theirs.

It matters because it completely weakens their point of stance and make them look unreasonable. Header is irrelevant since it isn't copyright infringement, and FWIW when it has been corrected (in the MR), then they decided that the MR is too complex for them and closed the whole issue. Ridiculous.

Re: AI has a deep understanding of how this code works

#219

Post by ramblerman »

owenversteeg wrote: post #182

I've seen a lot of AI-generated PRs but I think this one is actually a very unique and interesting case. Most of these are written by novices, don't work, are for less-technical projects, and there isn't any real conversation or changing opinions. This was completely different; it was complex and actually worked, the poster Joel Reymont has 30 years of software experience and not exactly on simple bullshit either (fr…

He didn't even realize (and apparently doesn't care) that portions of the code were attributed to another author.

> Here's my question: why did the files that you submitted name Mark Shinwell as the author?

> Beats me. AI decided to do so and I didn't question it.

---

Maybe he is having some kind of mental episode, is trolling, or genuinely doesn't care. But I would hardly hold this up as an example of an intelligent attempt at an AI generated PR.

Post reply on HN