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The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

simonwillison.net

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Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#241

Post by simonw »

einpoklum wrote: post #123
simonw wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why use someone's project when you can just have the robot write your own? I've been thinking about this a bunch recently, and I've realized that the thing I value most in software now isn't robust tests or thorough documentation - an LLM can spit those out in a few minutes. It's usage. I want to use software which other people have used before me. I want them to have encountered the bugs and sharp edges and sanded…

> an LLM can spit those out in a few minutes. It may be able to spit out text that purports to be that, in a few minutes. But for most software, an LLM will not be able to spit out robust tests - let alone useful documentation. (And documentation which just replicates the parameter names and types is thorough...ly useless.)

That's why I said "thorough" and not "good".

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#242

Post by bfrog »

eschaton wrote: post #234
bfrog wrote: post #222

I'm not sure how you could really take a stance on this. If someone used the tool to expedite work its unlikely you'd ever know it. If you use the tool to yeah, go one shot a ton of garbage then it will in fact be garbage.

It requires the people contributing the work to have the integrity to actually follow the project’s rules. It’s not OK to violate the project’s rules just because you don’t think you’ll be found out as a filthy fucking liar.

I mean best of luck policing this is all I'm going to say. We will soon be back to the "core contributors only" kind of policy in many projects I imagine to avoid the slop spam. The verification will be at the conferences.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#243

Post by nayroclade »

It seems like this policy will help them win at contributor poker in the short term, but lose in the end. The next generation of developers will, for better or worse, grow up using AI assistance to write their code, but none of them will ever become a Zig contributor.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#244

Post by DrewADesign »

nayroclade wrote: post #243

It seems like this policy will help them win at contributor poker in the short term, but lose in the end. The next generation of developers will, for better or worse, grow up using AI assistance to write their code, but none of them will ever become a Zig contributor.

Luckily, if that ends up being the case, they can change the policy. It’s a FOSS project — not a constitutional amendment.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#245

Post by gwbas1c »

grokys wrote: post #152

My issue with AI-generated OSS contributions is: If an AI improves developer productivity so much, why would maintainers of an OSS project want unknown contributors to sit in between the maintainer and the LLM? They'd be typing these queries into Claude Code themselves. To quote my colleague: > We do not need a middleman to talk to AI models. We are not bottlenecked by coding.

I'm finding that AI, when successful, gives me 2-3x speedup. It's not the kind of thing I can give high-level instructions to like I can to a human.

I suspect the people who claim that AI works by only giving it high-level instructions are mostly working on "mindless" projects where a developer in the weeds wouldn't need to think very much.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#246

Post by gwbas1c »

This reminds me of when I was in college in the early 2000s.

My fraternity's national organization refused to take photos over email for the newsletter because they got a virus.

It's a short-sighted policy that's akin to "throwing the baby out with the bathwater."

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#247

Post by porridgeraisin »

matkoniecz wrote: post #62
porridgeraisin wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I realised the same. No one reads docs, or goes through tests. Either ways it's easy to write useless tests. And easy to write useless docs. Idt most even read the code. Now the difference is that it has become possible to write useless code. So it's just the fact that others have already gone through the motions before I did. That's it really. I suppose in commercial settings, this is even more true and perhaps…

> No one reads docs, or goes through tests. I regularly do both when trying to use library, especially unfamiliar to me.

Dare I say you're in the minority

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#248

Post by zeroonetwothree »

thunderfork wrote: post #217
daishi55 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think they skipped the main zig test suite or something? Only tested bun compilation? That seems unlikely to me

They didn't take into account the long-run impacts of the changes on future development, etc. I recommend reading the explanation given by one of the Zig devs, as it's a very clear and solid one.

This is the most common issue I see with LLM authored PRs. Yes it does fix the issue _right now_ but as a maintainer I need to consider how it affects the project in the future. But “contributors” get mad if you reject for those reasons. So I can understand having a blanket policy.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#249

Post by franktankbank »

SuperV1234 wrote: post #228
franktankbank wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you are at the whims of the bot they are at least partially dependent on.

You could extend that argument to any tool used by the developer, like a linter, sanitizer, the IDE itself, or even auto-completion. Why target LLMs specifically? The more I think about it, the more nonsensical it is. - What if I do everything by hand, but have an LLM review my work at the very end? - What if I have an LLM guide me through the codebase just by specifying the files I should read and in what order, but…

Would you let your nanny subcontract?

edit: Can't reply because I've posted a whole 4 times.

I believe we have different world views which is hardly a disagreement. Answering my question could pretty well highlight our difference of opinion.

Re: The Zig project's rationale for their anti-AI contribution policy

#250

Post by tovej »

mexicocitinluez wrote: post #200
tovej wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An LLM most definitely cannot spit out robust tests or thorough documentation. It can spit out some tests or some documentation, but they will not cover the user perspective or edge cases unless those are already documented somewhere. That's verified by both experience and just thinking about it for two seconds. The sanding down you refer to is what generates those tests and documentation.

> but they will not cover the user perspective or edge cases unless those are already documented somewhere Are you suggesting that LLM's can't test for people who use screen readers? Keyboard only users? Slow network requests? You're acting like the issues an app faces are so bespoke to the actual app itself (and have absolutely no relation to existing problems in this space) that an LLM couldn't possibly cover it. A…

I'm not talking about keyboards or screen readers or any sort of input testing, I'm talking about how the software is used in practice.

If you disagree with that, I think the onus is on you to show me that an LLM could simulate the full context in which a user interfaces with software. That's a ridiculous claim.

Feel free to show literally any evidence for this claim.

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