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AI Usage Policy

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Re: AI Usage Policy

#251

Post by radarsat1 »

simonw wrote: post #162
radarsat1 wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, I get that writing prompts is "the work", but if you run them again you don't get the same code. So what's the point of keeping them? They are not 'source code' in the same sense as a programming language.

That's why I want the transcript that shows the prompts AND the responses. The prompts alone have little value. The overall conversation shows me exactly what I did, what the agent did and the end result.

> shows me exactly what I did

I get that, but I guess what I'm asking is, why does it matter what you did?

The result is working, documented source code, which seems to me to be the important part. What value does keeping the prompt have?

I'm not trying to needle, I just don't see it.

Re: AI Usage Policy

#252

Post by verdverm »

alya wrote: post #219

At the Zulip open-source project, we've had a significant onslaught of AI slop in the past few months. It gets as absurd as PR descriptions with AI-generated "screenshots" of the app to "demonstrate" the changes. We've had to start warning contributors that we won't be able to review their work if they continue misusing AI, and occasionally banning repeat offenders. It's feels draining -- we want to spend our time me…

Honestly, yours looks nothing like Mitchell's to me, and that's a good thing.

It's actually reasonable and the guidance you provide on how to best use Ai when contributing to Zulip is :chef's kiss:

truly, I'm going to copy yours as a thank you!

Re: AI Usage Policy

#253

Post by waldrews »

We're just not going to see any code written entirely without AI except in specialist niches, just as we don't see handwritten assembly and binaries. So the disclosure part is going to become boilerplate.

In the old era, the combination 'it works' + 'it uses a sophisticated language' + 'it integrates with a complex codebase' implied that this was an intentional effort by someone who knew what they were doing, and therefore probably safe to commit.

We can no longer make that social assumption. So then, what can we rely on to signal 'this was thoroughly supervised and reviewed and understood and tested?' That's going to be hard and subjective.

Personal reputations and track records are pedigrees and brands are going to become more important in the industry; and the meritocratic 'code talks no matter where you came from' ethos is at risk.

Re: AI Usage Policy

#255

Post by Applejinx »

Applejinx wrote: post #205
embedding-shape wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me it sounds like "text and code" are free from the controversy surrounding AI-generated media. It really isn't, don't you recall the "protests" against Microsoft starting to use repositories hosted at GitHub for training their own coding models? Lots of articles and sentiments everywhere at the time. Seems to have died down though, probably because most developers seemingly at this point use LLMs in some capaci…

I bet they aren't honoring the terms of the MIT license I use for my repos. It's pretty lenient and I bet they're still not compliant.

I see a downvote. All righty then: cite where they credited me. Go on :)

Re: AI Usage Policy

#256

Post by achyudh »

senko wrote: post #64

On a tangent: the origin of the problems with low-quality drive-by requests is github's social nature. That might have been great when GitHub started, but nowadays many use it as portfolio padding and/or social proof. "This person contributed to a lot of projects" heuristic for "they're a good and passionate developer" means people will increasingly game this using low-quality submissions. This has been happening for…

Mailing lists essentially solve this by introducing friction: only those who genuinely care about the project will bother to git send-email and defend a patch over an email thread. The incentive for low-quality drive-by submissions also evaporates as there is no profile page with green squares to farm. The downside is that it potentially reduces the number of contributors by making it a lot harder for new contributors to onboard.

Re: AI Usage Policy

#257

Post by johnnyanmac »

mg794613 wrote: post #156
Version467 wrote: post #24

The biggest surprise to me with all this low-quality contribution spam is how little shame people apparently have. I have a handful of open source contributions. All of them are for small-ish projects and the complexity of my contributions are in the same ball-park as what I work on day-to-day. And even though I am relatively confident in my competency as a developer, these contributions are probably the most thoroug…

It's because a lot of people that werent skilful werent on your path before. Now that pandora's box has been re-opened, those people feel "they get a second chance at life". It's not that they have no shame, they have no perspective to put that shame. You on the other hand, have for many years honed your craft. The more you learn, the more you discover to learn aka , you realize how little you know. They don't have t…

That all makes sense. But the more I know, the more I realize that a lot of software engineering isn't about crazy algorithms and black magic. I'd argue a good 80% of it is the ability to pick up the broken glass, something even many students can pull off. 15% of that comes down to avoiding landmines in a large field as you pick up said glass.

But that care isn't even evident here. People submitting prs that don't even compile, bug reports for issues that may not even exist. The minimum I'd expect is to check the work of whatever you vibe coded. We can't even get that. It's some. Odd form of clout chasing as if repos are a factor of success, not what you contribute to them.

Re: AI Usage Policy

#258

Post by johnnyanmac »

Sharlin wrote: post #55
monegator wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The biggest surprise to me with all this low-quality contribution spam is how little shame people apparently have. ever had a client second guess you by replying you a screenshot from GPT? ever asked anything in a public group only to have a complete moron replying you with a screenshot from GPT or - at least a bit of effor there - a copy/paste of the wall of text? no, people have no shame. they have a need for a l…

Problem is people seriously believe that whatever GPT tells them must be true, because… I don't even know. Just because it sounds self-confident and authoritative? Because computers are supposed to not make mistakes? Because talking computers in science fiction do not make mistakes like that? The fact that LLMs ended up having this particular failure mode, out of all possible failure modes, is incredibly unfortunate…

This is probably more of a GAI achievement, but we definitely need confidence levels when it comes to making queries with factual responses.

But yes, look at the US c.2025-6. As long as the leader sounds assertive, some people will eat the blatant lies that can be disproven even by the same AI tools they laud.

Re: AI Usage Policy

#259

Post by johnnyanmac »

buggy6257 wrote: post #111
Suzuran wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My boss says it's because they are backed by trillion dollar companies and the companies would face dire legal threats if they did not ensure the correctness of AI output.

Your boss sounds hilarious naive to how the world works.

Just doesn't understand the scale of money.

Maybe a million dollar company needs to be compliant. A billion dollar company can start to ward off any loopholes with lawsuits instead of compliance.

A trillion dollar company will simply change the law and fight governments over the law to begin with, rather than worrying about compliance.

Re: AI Usage Policy

#260

Post by BlackjackCF »

mg794613 wrote: post #156
Version467 wrote: post #24

The biggest surprise to me with all this low-quality contribution spam is how little shame people apparently have. I have a handful of open source contributions. All of them are for small-ish projects and the complexity of my contributions are in the same ball-park as what I work on day-to-day. And even though I am relatively confident in my competency as a developer, these contributions are probably the most thoroug…

It's because a lot of people that werent skilful werent on your path before. Now that pandora's box has been re-opened, those people feel "they get a second chance at life". It's not that they have no shame, they have no perspective to put that shame. You on the other hand, have for many years honed your craft. The more you learn, the more you discover to learn aka , you realize how little you know. They don't have t…

I find that interesting because for the first 10 years of my career, I didn’t feel any confidence in contributing to open source at all because I didn’t feel I had the expertise to do so. I was even reluctant to file bugs because I always figured I was on the wrong and I didn’t want to cause churn for the maintainers.
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