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Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

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Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#271
post #43

New policy boils down to "AI or not, it's still your code and you're responsible for it". I can get on board with that.

A good thing about the "you're the author regardless of the tool you used to produce the code" policy is that if a developer repeatedly submits poor quality AI generated code, one does not blame the model or the agent, one bans/terminates the developer.

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Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#272
post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not convinced it blows up. It might also end up placing a larger burden on contributors, and especially first-time contributors, to provide concise, high-quality documentation that justifies their contribution. I'm thinking of something like: Explain, in at most 300 characters, why we should merge your change, or at least why we should invest the time to read a longer explanation (somethings things ARE complex).…

you know EXACTLY what would happen in such a system.

I don't, please enlighten me.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#273
post #263
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good thing about the "you're the author regardless of the tool you used to produce the code" policy is that if a developer repeatedly submits poor quality AI generated code, one does not blame the model or the agent, one bans/terminates the developer.

The issue that open source projects are facing at the moment is that it takes significantly less effort to submit a patch for review. A lot of developers who are submitting these AI patches don't necessarily understand the patch, so the onus is on the reviewer/code-owner. The reviewers are getting swamped (some reviewers are receiving 100s or patches per month). If feedback is provided at lot of the time the patch au…

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle?

Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct?

I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except LLMs actually are making programmers dumber. I personally know people, people whom I know for a fact were good programmers before, who have now completely stopped using their brains. When you ask them why they did something in the code, they say "I don't know, Claude did that and I didn't really question it". There was no such analogous phenomenon with IDEs.

You can just ask Claude why it did something in the code and it will tell you Programmers just moved up a level , not dumber, we are now managers of a team of 'agent' programmers. The deliverable is now a functionality instead of a specific block of code

An LLM has no special insight into itself and has no reasons. It will come up with something that is convincing, and it will change based on the word choices you used in the request. You can observe this by asking it why it did something that it didn't actually do.

Dementia patients also do this.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#275
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A good thing about the "you're the author regardless of the tool you used to produce the code" policy is that if a developer repeatedly submits poor quality AI generated code, one does not blame the model or the agent, one bans/terminates the developer.

yeah, that's fair. Problem so far has been when poor developers send massive volume of slop for review. Takes time and effort to review or at least glance and test it, especially if developer hasn't bothered.

that seems like two separate problems.

too many patches from unknown and untrusted contributors is a triage problem - telling a known and trusted contributor they can't use AI to help work on something just because other people are sending slop for review is throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#276
post #23

New policy boils down to "AI or not, it's still your code and you're responsible for it". I can get on board with that.

This is the way it should've always been. I don't care what tool you use, but you'd better be ready to stand by and explain the results if necessary.

"This works for me, but I need help understanding why, because maybe it would help others" is a legitimate position to be in--has been since long before LLMs. I think we miss out on something when we ignore that position.

I'm not saying that anybody should be obligated to review large volumes of low confidence code... just that we should not make policies that ignore shades of gray which, with some collaboration, could bear fruit.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#277
post #181
post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremes on both sides. I'd wager were moving in Yegge's direction though, like it or not. > Though it's being argued that you could still be responsible for it without looking at it? If you have a much test coverage as SQLite, I'd be tempted to trust it, and I think that's where we are headed. Someone still needs to define these guardrails though, so IMO the developers job is just mutating into something else, but i…

For me, it’s not a question of whether I like it, nor where we might move in the future, but purely what is proven currently. In my experience, as in my evals, any model, including notably Fable 5 and GPT-5.6 Sol can and indeed do produce code that does not consider many edge cases, can be hard to maintain (especially Sol though it’s output has become markedly better with recent changes to Codex) and sometimes introd…

It's not about the prompt, it's about the guardrails. Static types, compiled, massive test suite, etc. That what I mean by extreme level of test coverage like SQLite. You'd actually need to be an expert in C and SQLite and the SQLite test suite just to sneak a bug into it. Testing and other verifications are going to be an exciting area for the foreseeable future.

You can still write non-performant code even with tests, but you can also test performance!

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#278
post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue that open source projects are facing at the moment is that it takes significantly less effort to submit a patch for review. A lot of developers who are submitting these AI patches don't necessarily understand the patch, so the onus is on the reviewer/code-owner. The reviewers are getting swamped (some reviewers are receiving 100s or patches per month). If feedback is provided at lot of the time the patch au…

The question becomes, does it take more time to create or review in the Grand scheme of the software life cycle? Because if it's still a time saver, even with the increased review load, then it's a win, correct? I'm not a coder so I have zero idea. Thoughts?

It's a well-known trope, that it's harder to read code than to write it, and review is more complicated than to read it, so I do not understand what you want to imply?

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#279

Good. AI is a game changer. It's like having an expert sitting next to you at all times. It's understandable why all these experts who want to gatekeep don't like AI, but ultimately, AI will win out, it's just too good.

The issue with AI is not its obvious value, it's our dependence on it. I worry what will happen to me when I am cut off for some reason. Local models are going to be really important and hopefully computing costs don't make it too prohibitive.

If you're cut off for some reason, you won't code -- but if you're cut off from a power plant, you also won't code. We're reaching the end of scalability for human brains, so we're offloading it.

Sure, it means that selling intellectual labor is reaching the end of the line, and the value of learning will drop, but there's a lot more wealth that will be generated.

Re: Debian votes to allow "responsible use of generative AI"

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody can take local models away from you, either

Yea, that's sorta my point. We're not, or at least I'm not to the point I have a local model as good as Opus yet though.

We're only a few years into this whole thing...

In any case you can say the exact same thing about reading. Take the book away and bam, you know nothing. A person who memorized the book is not dependent on an expensive, heavy thing like a book.

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