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Debian decides not to decide on AI-generated contributions

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

#251

Post by duskdozer »

glhaynes wrote: post #42
aerodexis wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting argument for AI ethics in general. It takes the form of "guns don't kill people - people kill people".

An argument that I have some sympathy for, while still being moderately+ in favor of gun control (here in the USA where I'm a citizen). It seems that gun control—though imperfect—in regions that have implemented it has had a good bit of success and the legitimate/non-harmful capabilities lost seem worth it to me in trade for the gains. (Reasonable people can disagree here!) Whereas it seems to me that if we accept th…

The AI hype machine is pushing the "inevitability" and "left behind" sentiments to make it a self-fulfilling prophecy, like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pluralistic_ignorance, and they have the profit and power incentives to do so and drive mass adoption. It is far from certain that AI will be indispensable or that people will "fall behind" for not using it.

Why would the AI-fans even care if others who decide not to use it fall behind? Wouldn't they get to point and laugh and enjoy the benefits of "keeping up"? Their fervor should be looked at with suspicion.

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

#252

Post by Serenacula »

cortesoft wrote: post #242
gwbas1c wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd MUCH rather see a holistic embrace and integration of these tools into our ecosystems. Telling people "no AI!" (even if very well defined on what that means) is toothless against people with little regard for making the world (or just one specific repo) a better place. That doesn't address the controversy because you are a reasonable person assuming that other people using AI are reasonable like you, and know h…

How is an AI policy going to help prevent bad faith actors, though? People who are doing those harmful things with AI aren’t going to stop because of a policy. They are just going to lie and not admit their submissions are AI generated. At that point, you will still have to review the code and reject it if it is bad quality, just like you had to without an AI policy. The policy doesn’t make it any easier to filter ou…

Some of them will lie. Plenty of people do just follow the rules or are acting in good faith though, so at the very least it can help cut it down.

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

#253

Post by tdeck »

veunes wrote: post #137
sothatsit wrote: post #70

Concerns about the wasting of maintainer’s time, onboarding, or copyright, are of great interest to me from a policy perspective. But I find some of the debate around the quality of AI contributions to be odd. Quality should always be the responsibility of the person submitting changes. Whether a person used LLMs should not be a large concern if someone is acting in good-faith. If they submitted bad code, having used…

The real invariant is responsibility: if you submit a patch, you own it. You should understand it, be able to defend the design choices, and maintain it if needed

"You committed it, you own it" can't even be enforced effectively at large companies, given employee turnover and changes in team priorities and recorgs. It's hard to see how this could be done effectively in open source projects. Once the code is in there, end users will rely on it. Other code will rely on it. If the original author goes radio silent it still can't be ripped out.

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

#255

Post by qsera »

sothatsit wrote: post #110
qsera wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If they submitted bad code... The core issue is that it takes a large amount of effort to even assess this, because LLM generated code looks good superficially. It is said that static FP languages make it hard to implement something if you don't really understand what you are implementing. Dynamically typed languages makes it easier to implement something when you don't fully understand what you are implementing. L…

The people likely to submit low-effort contributions are also the people most likely to ignore policies restricting AI usage. The people following the policies are the most likely to use AI responsibly and not submit low-effort contributions. I’m more interested in how we might allow people to build trust so that reviewers can positively spend time on their contributions, whilst avoiding wasting reviewers time on dri…

I think The best place where AI can help in software development is helping with reviews, not doing development.

But AI marketing would not like to promote it, may because it is less dramatic and does not involve a paradigm shift or something...

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

#256

Post by PunchyHamster »

mr-wendel wrote: post #58

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…

> I'd MUCH rather see a holistic embrace and integration of these tools into our ecosystems. Telling people "no AI!" (even if very well defined on what that means) is toothless against people with little regard for making the world (or just one specific repo) a better place.

If it makes them go thru AI contributions to make sure there is no AI nonsense in them, that's already massive win.

The AI on itself is not a problem

> But, on the flip side, I personally advocate hard for AI from the point-of-view on accessibility. I know (more-or-less) exactly what output I'm aiming for and control that obsessively, but it's AI and my voice at the helm instead of my fingertips.

and you are the 1% (assuming your claims are true and not hallucinated gains, which are common in AI world too), vast majority of AI contributions are peak lazy, or at best goal-seeking with no regard of the target, consequences or quality

THAT is what people complain about. If AI was just used to shortcut the boring, augument the knowledge and produce better quality code, there would be very little arugments against AI-driven contributions. But that is not the case, the AI pundits will purposefully not check the AI output just because that would require time and knowledge and that looks bad on "how faster AI makes you" KPI

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

#257

Post by PunchyHamster »

LinXitoW wrote: post #182
pixl97 wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>other people are reasonable like you No AI needed. Spam on the internet is a great example of the amount of unreasonable people on the internet. And for this I'll define unreasonable as "committing an action they would not want committed back at them". AI here is the final nail in the coffin that many sysadmins have been dealing with for decades. And that is that unreasonable actors are a type of asymmetric warfare…

Every order of magnitude of difference constitutes a categorical difference. The ability to create spam instantly, fitted perfectly to any situation, and doing that 24/7, everywhere, is very different from before. Before, spam was annoying but generally different enough to tell apart. It was also (in general) never too much as to make an entire platform useless. With AI, the entire internet IS spam. No matter what yo…

And even if you figure out a reliable way to detect AI, guess what, USERS USE IT TOO for legitimate content, so you can't even use system like this. It's horrid

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

#258

Post by PunchyHamster »

cortesoft wrote: post #242
gwbas1c wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd MUCH rather see a holistic embrace and integration of these tools into our ecosystems. Telling people "no AI!" (even if very well defined on what that means) is toothless against people with little regard for making the world (or just one specific repo) a better place. That doesn't address the controversy because you are a reasonable person assuming that other people using AI are reasonable like you, and know h…

How is an AI policy going to help prevent bad faith actors, though? People who are doing those harmful things with AI aren’t going to stop because of a policy. They are just going to lie and not admit their submissions are AI generated. At that point, you will still have to review the code and reject it if it is bad quality, just like you had to without an AI policy. The policy doesn’t make it any easier to filter ou…

If the policy will make them at least double check AI didn't put its nonsense in, that's already a win

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

#259

Post by PunchyHamster »

fidorka wrote: post #9
3012846 wrote: post #3

Again you can see which developers are owned by corporations and which are not. There is no free software any longer.

What do you mean?

If you see developer rooting for using MIT/BSD licenses and especially replacing GPL with them, there is probably good 98% chance of them being corporate programmer that legal didn't allow to use GPL-licensed code and they are sad they can't steal everyone's work

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

#260

Post by lukan »

gwbas1c wrote: post #126
mr-wendel wrote: post #58

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…

> I'd MUCH rather see a holistic embrace and integration of these tools into our ecosystems. Telling people "no AI!" (even if very well defined on what that means) is toothless against people with little regard for making the world (or just one specific repo) a better place. That doesn't address the controversy because you are a reasonable person assuming that other people using AI are reasonable like you, and know h…

I see the solution as only engaging with reasonable persons and ignore the rest.

And the problem is filtering them out. That is real work that can be draining and demoralizing as unreasonable persons usually have their sad story why they are the way they are, but you cannot do therapy or coaching for random strangers while trying to get a project going.

So if people contribute good things, engage with them. If they contribute slob (AI generated or not) - you say no to them.

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