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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

#361

Post by ben_w »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #357
amake wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was self-evident then I wouldn’t need to ask for evidence. And I imagine you wouldn’t need to be waving your hands making excuses for the lack of evidence.

To me it's self-evident, but is probably one casual step removed from what you'd like to see. I can't point to specific finished or released projects that were substantially accelerated by use of GenAI[0]. But I can point out that nearly everyone I talked with in the last year, that does any kind of white-collar job, is either afraid of LLMs, actively using LLMs at work and finding them very useful, or both. It's not…

> One thing I can hint at, but can't go into details, is that I personally know of at least one enterprise-grade project whose roadmap and scoping - and therefore, funding - is critically dependent on AI speeding up significant amount of development and devops tasks by at least 2-3x; that aspect is understood by both developers, managers, customers and investors, and not disputed.

Mm. I can now see why, in your other comment, you want to keep up with the SOTA.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#362

Post by stronglikedan »

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…

To me, AI doesn't generate code by itself, so there's no difference between the outputted code or code written by the human that prompted it. As well, the humans that prompt it are solely responsible for making sure it is correct, and solely to blame for any negative outcomes of its use, just as if they had written it themselves.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#363

Post by TeMPOraL »

ben_w wrote: post #361
TeMPOraL wrote: post #357

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me it's self-evident, but is probably one casual step removed from what you'd like to see. I can't point to specific finished or released projects that were substantially accelerated by use of GenAI[0]. But I can point out that nearly everyone I talked with in the last year, that does any kind of white-collar job, is either afraid of LLMs, actively using LLMs at work and finding them very useful, or both. It's not…

> One thing I can hint at, but can't go into details, is that I personally know of at least one enterprise-grade project whose roadmap and scoping - and therefore, funding - is critically dependent on AI speeding up significant amount of development and devops tasks by at least 2-3x; that aspect is understood by both developers, managers, customers and investors, and not disputed. Mm. I can now see why, in your other…

It's actually unrelated. I try to keep up with the SOTA because if I'm not using the current-best model, then each time I have a hard time with it or get poor results, I keep wondering if I'm just wasting my time fighting with something a stronger model would do without problems. It's a personal thing; I've been like this ever since I got API access to GPT-4.

My use of LLMs isn't all that big, and I don't have any special early access or anything. It's just that the tokens are so cheap that, for casual personal and professional use, the pricing difference didn't matter. Switching to a stronger model meant that my average monthly bill went from $2 to $10 or something. These amounts were immaterial.

Use patterns and pricing changes, though, and recently this made some SOTA models (notably o3, gpt-4.5 and the most recent Opus model) too expensive for my use.

As for the project I referred to, let's put it this way: the reference point is what was SOTA ~2-3 months ago (Sonnet 3.7, Gemini 2.5 Pro). And the assumptions aren't just wishful thinking - they're based on actual experience with using these models (+ some tools) to speed up specific kind of work.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#364

Post by TeMPOraL »

bonzini wrote: post #209
rvnx wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Good luck debugging

You don't debug AI-generated code - you throw the problematic chunk away and have AI write it again, and if that doesn't help, you repeat the process, possibly with larger chunks.

Okay, not in every case, but in many, and that's where we're headed. The reason is economics - i.e. the same reason approximately no one in the West repairs their clothes or appliances; they just throw the damaged thing away and buy a new one. Human labor is expensive, automated production is cheap - even more so in digital space.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#365

Post by TeMPOraL »

conartist6 wrote: post #273
TeMPOraL wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

And because from the outside everything looks worse than ever. Worse quality, no more support, established companies going crazy to cut costs. AI slop is replacing thoughtful content across the web. Engineering morale is probably at an all time low for my 20 years watching this industry... So my question is: if so many people should be bragging to me and celebrating how much better things are, why does it look to me…

I think in context of this discussion you might be confused about what the term "better" refers to.

> And because from the outside everything looks worse than ever. Worse quality, no more support, established companies going crazy to cut costs. AI slop is replacing thoughtful content across the web. Engineering morale is probably at an all time low for my 20 years watching this industry.

That is true and present across the board. But consider, all of that is what "better" means to companies, and most of that is caused by actions that employers call success and reward employees for.

Our industry, in particular, is a stellar example - half of the things we make are making things worse; of the things that seem to make things better, half of them are actually making things worse, but it's not visible because of accounting trickery (e.g. specialized roles cut is legible to beancounters; the workload being diffused and dragging everyone else's productivity down is not).

So yeah, AI is making things better for its users, but expect that what's "better" for the industry whose main product is automating people away from their jobs, is going to translate to a lot of misery down the line.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#368

Post by duskwuff »

latexr wrote: post #325
ants_everywhere wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generally speaking AI will make it easier to write more secure code. Tooling and automation help a lot with security and AI makes it easier to write good tooling. I would wager good money that in a few years the most security-focused companies will be relying heavily on AI somewhere in their software supply chain. So I don't think this policy is about security posture. No doubt human experts are reviewing the securit…

> Generally speaking AI will make it easier to write more secure code. https://www.backslash.security/press-releases/backslash-secu...

Heh. Yup. And I'd be especially concerned about code written for QEMU, as it's an unusual type of application. There's lots of example code and other writings about security in web applications which a language model is likely to have encountered in its training; hypervisors are much less frequently discussed.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#369

Post by sswam »

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…

[dead]

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#370

Post by throwawayoldie »

rvnx wrote: post #287
amake wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Billions of people believe in god(s). In fact, 75 to 85% of the world population, btw.

Reality is not a matter decided by majority vote.
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