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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

#61

Post by delichon »

vladms wrote: post #26

Very reasonable stance. I see reviewing and accepting a PR is a question of trust - you trust the submitter to have done the most he can for the PR to be correct and useful. Something might be required now as some people might think that just asking an LLM is "the most he can done", but it's not about using AI it's about being aware and responsible about using it.

> I see reviewing and accepting a PR is a question of trust

I think that's backwards, at least as far as accepting a PR. Better that all code is reviewed as if it is probably a carefully thought out Trojan horse from a dedicated enemy until proven otherwise.

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

#62

Post by bombcar »

AlexandrB wrote: post #32
mrbungie wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same way niche/luxury product and services compare to fast/cheap ones: they are made with focus and intent that goes against the statistical average, which also normally would take more time and effort to make. McDonalds cooks ~great~ (edit: fair enough, decent) burgers when measured objectively, but people still go to more niche burger restaurants because they want something different and made with more care. Th…

> McDonalds cooks great burgers when measured objectively Wait, what? In what world are McDonalds burgers "great"? They're cheap . Maybe even a good value. But that's not the same as great .

They are consistent and decent, though arguably some are even good (though everyone usually has a preferred fast food destination).

Some of the best burgers I've ever had came from fast food.

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

#63

Post by bombcar »

datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #33
hombre_fatal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say "on a long enough timeline", but you already can't tell today in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing. I think a lot of anti-LLM opinions just come from interacting with the lowest effort LLM slop and someone not realizing that it's really a problem with a low value person behind it. It's why "no AI allowed" is pointless; high value contributors won't follow it because they know how to use it pro…

> It's why "no AI allowed" is pointless … If you tell me AI isn't allowed because it writes bad code I disagree that the rule is pointless, and your last point is a strawman. AI is disallowed because it’s the manner in which the would-be contributors are attempting to contribute to these projects. It’s a proxy rule. Unfortunately for AI maximalists, code is more than just letters on the screen. There needs to be huma…

> Unfortunately for AI maximalists, code is more than just letters on the screen. There needs to be human understanding, and if you’re not a core contributor who’s proven you’re willing to stick around when shit hits the fan, a +3000 PR is a liability, not an asset.

This isn't necessarily true; I've seen some projects absorb a PR of roughly that size, and after the smoke tests and other standard development stuff, the original PR author basically disappeared.

It added a feature he wanted, he tested and coded it, and got it in.

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

#65

Post by bombcar »

jruohonen wrote: post #22
theptip wrote: post #16

> disclosure if "a significant portion of the contribution is taken from a tool without manual modification", and labeling of such contributions with "a clear disclaimer or a machine-readable tag like '[AI-Generated]'. Quixotic, unworkable, pointless. It’s fundamentally impossible (at least without a level of surveillance that would obviously be unavceptable) to prove the “artisanal hand-crafted human code” label. >…

Debian has always been Debian and thus there are these purist opinions, but perhaps my take too would be something along the "one-strike-and-you-are-out" kind of a policy (i.e., you submit slop without being able to explain your submission in any way ) already followed in some projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109952

This is like trying to stop spam by banning emails that send you spam.

They can spin up LLM-backed contributors faster than you can ban them.

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

#66

Post by bombcar »

est31 wrote: post #38

I think it's a complicated issue. A lot of low quality AI contributions arrive using free tiers of these AI models, the output of which is pretty crap. On the other hand, if you max out the model configs, i.e. get "the best money can buy", then those models are actually quite useful and powerful. OSS should not miss out on the power LLMs can unleash. Talking about the maxed out versions of the newest models only, i.e…

The tacit understanding of all these is that the valued contributors can us AI as long as they can "defend the code" if you will, because AI used lightly and in that way would be indistinguishable from knuthkode.

The problem is having an unwritten rule is sometimes worse than a written one, even if it "works".

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

#67

Post by SlinkyOnStairs »

bityard wrote: post #55
SlinkyOnStairs wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reputation isn't very relevant here. Yes, for established well known FOSS developers, their reputation will tank if they put out sloppy PRs and people will just ignore them. But the projects aren't drowning under PRs from reputable people. They're drowning in drive-by PRs from people with no reputation to speak of. Even if you outright ban their account, they'll just spin up a new one and try again. Blocking AI submi…

> because the alternative is to ban submissions from people without reputation, and that'd be very harmful to open source. Hmmm, no? That's actually very common in open source. Maybe "banning" isn't the right word, but lots of projects don't accept random drive-by submissions and never have. Debian is a perfect example, you are very unlikely to get a nontrivial patch or package into Debian unless you have some kind o…

Setting aside "make an issue first" because those too are flooded with LLMs.

> you are very unlikely to get a nontrivial patch or package into Debian unless you have some kind of interaction or rapport with a package maintainer

I did mean the "trivial" patches as well, as often it's a lot of these small little fixes to single issues that improve software quality overall.

But yes, it's true that it's not uncommon for projects to refuse outside PRs.

This already causes massive amounts of friction and contributes (heh) heavily to what makes Open Source such a pain in the ass to use.

Conversely, many popular "good" open source libraries rely extensively on this inflow of small contributions to become comprehensively good.

And so it's a tradeoff. Forcing all open source into refusing drive-by PRs will have costs. What makes sense for major security-sensitive projects with large resources doesn't make sense for others.

It's not that we won't have open source at all. It's that it'll just be worse and encourage further fragmentation. e.g. One doesn't build a good .ZIP library by carefully reading the specification, you get it by collecting a million little examples of weird zip files in the wild breaking your code.

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

#68

Post by [deleted] »

aerodexis wrote: post #28
sheepscreek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. “AI” contributions should be seen as an extension of the individual. If anything, they could ask that the account belong to a person and not be a second bot only account. Basically, a person’s own reputation should be on the line.

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

[deleted]

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

#69

Post by jruohonen »

bombcar wrote: post #65
jruohonen wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Debian has always been Debian and thus there are these purist opinions, but perhaps my take too would be something along the "one-strike-and-you-are-out" kind of a policy (i.e., you submit slop without being able to explain your submission in any way ) already followed in some projects: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47109952

This is like trying to stop spam by banning emails that send you spam. They can spin up LLM-backed contributors faster than you can ban them.

If the situation becomes that worse, I agree with you; otherwise, I don't see that as a problem.

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

#70

Post by sothatsit »

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 AI is not a valid excuse.

Policies restricting AI-use might hurt good contributors while bad contributors ignore the restrictions. That said, restrictions for non-quality reasons, like copyright concerns, might still make sense.

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