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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

#81

Post by diabllicseagull »

SchemaLoad wrote: post #72
acedTrex wrote: post #58

Oh hey, the thing I predicted in my blog titled "yes i will judge you for using AI" happened lol Basically I think open source has traditionally HEAVILY relied on hidden competency markers to judge the quality of incoming contributions. LLMs throw that entire concept on its head by presenting code that has competent markers but none of the backing experience. It is a very very jarring experience for experienced indiv…

I've started seeing this at work with coworkers using LLMs to generate code reviews. They submit comments which are way above their skill level which almost trick you in to thinking they are correct since only a very skilled developer would make these suggestions. And then ultimately you end up wasting tons of time proving how these suggestions are wrong. Spending far more time than the person pasting the suggestions…

funny enough I had coworkers who similarly had a hold of the jargon but without any substance. They would always turn out to be time sinks for others doing the useful work. AI imitating that type of drag on the workplace is kinda funny ngl.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#82

Post by astrobiased »

BurningFrog wrote: post #61

Would it make sense to include the complete prompt that generated the code with the code?

It would need to be more than that. A prompt for one model can have different results vs another. Even when the model has different treatment for inference, eg quantization, the same prompt for the unquantized and quantized model could differ.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#83

Post by alganet »

AJ007 wrote: post #63
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…

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

Quoting them:

> The policy we set now must be for today, and be open to revision. It's best to start strict and safe, then relax.

So, no need for the drama.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#84

Post by viraptor »

amake wrote: post #71
AJ007 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

> #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will not be competitive with AI assisted or written projects Still waiting to see evidence of AI-driven projects eating the lunch of "traditional" projects.

It's happening slowly all around. It's not obvious because people producing high quality stuff have no incentive at all to mark their changes as AI-generated. But there are also local tools generated faster than you could adjust existing tools to do what you want. I'm running 3 things now just for myself that I generated from scratch instead of trying to send feature requests to existing apps I can buy.

It's only going to get more pervasive from now on.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#85

Post by hinterlands »

wyldfire wrote: post #13

I understand where this comes from but I think it's a mistake. I agree it would be nice if there were "well settled law" regarding AI and copyright, probably relatively few rulings and next to zero legislation on which to base their feelings. In addition to a policy to reject contributions from AI, I think it may make sense to point out places where AI generated content can be used. For example - how much of QEMU pro…

I think you need to read between the lines here. Anything you do is a legal risk, but this particular risk seems acceptable to many of the world's largest and richest companies. QEMU isn't special, so if they're taking this position, it's most likely simply because they don't want to deal with LLM-generated code for some other reason, are eager to use legal risk as a cover to avoid endless arguments on mailing lists.

We do that in corporate environments too. "I don't like this" -> "let me see what lawyers say" -> "a-ha, you can't do it because legal says it's a risk".

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#86

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 »

AJ007 wrote: post #63
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…

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

I am of two minds of it having now seen both good coders augmented by AI and bad coders further diminished by it ( I would even argue its worse than stack overflow, because back then they would at least would have had to adjust code a little bit ).

I am personally somewhere in the middle, just good enough to know I am really bad at this so I make sure that I don't contribute to anything that is actually important ( like QEMU ).

But how many people recognize their own strengths and weaknesses? That is part of the problem and now we are proposing that even that modicum of self-regulation ( as flawed as it is ) be removed.

FWIW, I hear you. I also don't have an answer. Just thinking out loud.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#87

Post by luqtas »

amake wrote: post #71
AJ007 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

> #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will not be competitive with AI assisted or written projects Still waiting to see evidence of AI-driven projects eating the lunch of "traditional" projects.

that's like driving big personal vehicles and having a bunch of children and eating a bunch of meat and do nothing about because marine and terrestrial ecosystems weren't fully destroyed by global warming

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#88

Post by loeg »

lmm wrote: post #45
loeg wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historically the opposite of quality contributions has been no contributions, not net-negative contributions (random slop that costs more in review than it provides benefit).

No it hasn't? Net-negative contributions to open source have been extremely common for years, it's not like you need an LLM to make them.

I guess we've had very different experiences!

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#89

Post by [deleted] »

candiddevmike wrote: post #57
mattl wrote: post #47

I'm interested to see how this plays out. I'd like a similar policy for my projects, but also a similar policy/T&C that prohibits the crawling of the content too.

Only way to prohibit crawling is to go back to invite only, probably self-hosted repositories. These companies have no shame, your T&Cs won't mean anything to them and you have no way of proving they violated them without some kind of discovery into their training data.

[deleted]
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