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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

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Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#221

Post by amake »

rvnx wrote: post #196
amake wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We have AI agents that have been trained to review thousands of PRs that are produced by other, generative agents, and together they have already churned out much more software than human teams can write in a year. Was your comment tongue-in-cheek? If not, where is this huge mass of AI-generated software?

All around you, just that it doesn’t make sense for developers to reveal that a lot of their work is now about chunking and refining the specifications written by the product owner. Admitting such is like admitting you are overpaid for your job, and that a 20 USD AI-agent can do better and faster than you for 75% of the work. Is it easy to admit that you have learnt skills for 10+ years that are progressively already…

> All around you, just that it doesn’t make sense for developers to reveal that

OK, but I asked for evidence and people just keep not providing any.

"God is all around you; he just works in mysterious ways"

OK, good luck with that.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#222

Post by amake »

bredren wrote: post #200
amake wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not obvious because people producing high quality stuff have no incentive at all to mark their changes as AI-generated I feel like we'd be hearing from business that crushed their competition by delivering faster or with fewer people. Where are those businesses? > But there are also local tools generated This is really not the same thing as the original claim ("Software projects that somehow are 100% human dev…

This is happening right now and it won’t be obvious until the liquidity events provide enough cover for victory lap story telling. The very knowledge that an organization is experiencing hyper acceleration due to its successful adoption of AI across the enterprise is proprietary. There are no HBS case studies about businesses that successfully established and implemented strategic pillars for AI because the pillars w…

> This is happening right now and it won’t be obvious until

I asked for evidence and, as always, lots of people are popping out of the woodwork to swear that it's true but I can't see the evidence yet.

OK, then. Good luck with that.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#223

Post by amake »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #202
amake wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's not obvious because people producing high quality stuff have no incentive at all to mark their changes as AI-generated I feel like we'd be hearing from business that crushed their competition by delivering faster or with fewer people. Where are those businesses? > But there are also local tools generated This is really not the same thing as the original claim ("Software projects that somehow are 100% human dev…

> I feel like we'd be hearing from business that crushed their competition by delivering faster or with fewer people. Where are those businesses? As if tech part was the major part of getting the product to market. Those businesses are probably everywhere. They just aren't open about admitting they're using AI to speed up their marketing/product design/programming/project management/graphics design, because a) it's n…

> Those businesses are probably everywhere. They just aren't open about admitting

"Where's the evidence?" "Probably everywhere."

OK, good luck, have fun

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#224

Post by graemep »

koolala wrote: post #166
benlivengood wrote: post #35

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

This is a win for MIT license though.

From what point of view?

For someone using MIT licensed code for training, it still requires a copy of the license and the copyright notice in "copies or substantial portions of the software". SO I guess its fine for a snippet, but if the AI reproduces too much of it, then its in breach.

From the point of view of someone who does not want their code used by an LLM then using GPL code is more likely to be a breach.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#225

Post by amake »

mcoliver wrote: post #143
amake wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will not be competitive with AI assisted or written projects Still waiting to see evidence of AI-driven projects eating the lunch of "traditional" projects.

80-90% of Claude is now written by Claude

Using AI tools make AI tools is not the impact outside of the AI bubble that people are looking for.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#226

Post by graemep »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #6
Havoc wrote: post #4

I wonder whether the motivation is really legal? I get the sense that some projects are just sick of reviewing crap AI submissions

This could honestly break open source, with how quickly you can generate bullshit, and how long it takes to review and reject it. I can imagine more projects going the way of Android where you can download the source, but realistically you can't contribute as a random outsider.

I think it is yet another reason (potentially malicious contributors are another) that open source projects are going to have to verify contributors.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#227

Post by whatevertrevor »

joshstrange wrote: post #149
andy99 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had someone higher up ask about something in my area of expertise. I said I didn't think is was possible, he followed up with a chatGPT conversation he had where it "gave him some ideas that we could use as an approach", as if that was some useful insight. This is the same people that think that "learning to code" is a translation issue they don't have time for as opposed to experience they don't have.

I’ve started to experience/see this and it makes me want to scream. You can’t dismiss it out of hand (especially with it coming from up the chain) but it takes no time at all to generate by someone who knows nothing about the problem space (or worse, just enough to be dangerous) and it could take hours or more to debunk/disprove the suggestion. I don’t know what to call this? Cognitive DDOS? Amplified Plausibility At…

It's simply the Bullshit Asymmetry Principle/Brandolini's Law. It's just that bullshit generation speedrunners have recently discovered tool-assists.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#228

Post by graemep »

kazinator wrote: post #94
bfLives wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is a well settled practice in computing that you just don't plagiarize code. Even a small snippet. I think way many developers use StackOverflow suggests otherwise.

In the first place, in order to post to StackOverflow, you are required to have the copyright over the code, and be able to grant them a perpetual license. They redistribute the material under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ This allows visitors to use the material, with attribution. One can, of course, use the ideas in a SO answer to develop one's own solution.

> you are required to have the copyright over the code, and be able to grant them a perpetual license.

Which Stack Overflow cannot verify. It might be pulled from a code base, or generated by AI (I would bet a lot is now).

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#229

Post by 1dom »

a4isms wrote: post #68
andy99 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had someone higher up ask about something in my area of expertise. I said I didn't think is was possible, he followed up with a chatGPT conversation he had where it "gave him some ideas that we could use as an approach", as if that was some useful insight. This is the same people that think that "learning to code" is a translation issue they don't have time for as opposed to experience they don't have.

> This is the same people that think that "learning to code" is a translation issue they don't have time for as opposed to experience they don't have. This is very, very germane and a very quotable line. And these people have been around from long before LLMs appeared. These are the people who dash off an incomplete idea on Friday afternoon and expect to see a finished product in production by next Tuesday, latest. T…

The unfortunate truth is that approach does work, sometimes. It's really easy and common for capable engineers to think their way out of doing something because of all the different things they can think about it.

Sometimes, an unreasonable dumbass whose only authority comes from corporate heirarchy is needed to mandate the engineers start chipping away at the tasks. If they weren't a dumbass, they'd know the unreasonable thing they're mandating, and if they weren't unreasonable, they wouldn't mandate the someone does it.

I am an an engineer. "Sometimes" could be swapped for "rarely" above, but the point still stands: as much frustration as I have towards those people, they do occasionally lead to the impossible being delivered. But then again, a stopped clock -> twice a day etc.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#230

Post by danielbln »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #187
basilgohar wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like this is mostly proofless assertion. I'm aware what you hint at is happening, but the conclusions you arrive at are far from proven or even reasonable at this stage. For what it's worth, I think AI for code will arrive at a place like how other coding tools sit – hinting, intellisense, linting, maybe even static or dynamic analysis, but I doubt NOT using AI will be a critical asset to productivity. Someone…

IMO LLMs are best when used as locally-run offline search engines. This is a clear and obvious disruptive technology. But we will need to get a lot better at finetuning first. People don't want generalist LLMs, they want "expert systems".

Speak for yourself, I prefer generalist LLMs. Also, the bitter lesson of ML applies.
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