KritVutGu (u/KritVutGu)

KritVutGu commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

electric_muse · 3 days ago

I just submitted my first big open source contribution to the OpenAI agents SDK for JS. Every word except the issue I opened was done by AI.

On the flip side, I’m preparing to open source a project I made for a serializable state machine with runtime hooks. But that’s blood sweat and tears labor. AI is writing a lot of the unit tests and the code, but it’s entirely by my architectural design.

There’s a continuum here. It’s not binary. How can we communicate what role AI played?

And does it really matter anymore?

(Disclaimer: autocorrect corrected my spelling mistakes. Sent from iPhone.)

KritVutGu · 3 days ago

> AI is writing a lot of the unit tests

Are you kidding?

- For ages now, people have used "broad test coverage" and "CI" as excuses for superficial reviews, as excuses for negligent coding and verification.

- And now people foist even writing the test suite off on AI.

Don't you see that this way you have no reasoned examination of the code?

> ... and the code, but it’s entirely by my architectural design.

This is fucking bullshit. The devil is in the details, always. The most care and the closest supervision must be precisely where the rubber meets the road. I wouldn't want to drive a car that you "architecturally designed", and a statistical language model manufactured.

KritVutGu commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

estimator7292 · 3 days ago

Do I also have to disclose using tab completion? My IDE uses machine learning for completion suggestions.

Do I need to disclose that I wrote a script to generate some annoying boilerplate? Or that my IDE automatically templates for loops?

KritVutGu · 3 days ago

> Do I also have to disclose using tab completion? My IDE uses machine learning for completion suggestions.

Yes, you have to disclose it.

> Do I need to disclose that I wrote a script to generate some annoying boilerplate?

You absolutely need to disclose it.

> Or that my IDE automatically templates for loops?

That's probably worth disclosing too.

KritVutGu commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

hodgehog11 · 3 days ago

How does this not lead to a situation where no honest person can use any AI in their submissions? Surely pull requests that acknowledge AI tooling will be given significantly less attention, on the grounds that no one wants to read work that they know is written by AI.

KritVutGu · 3 days ago

Good point. That's the point exactly. Don't use AI for writing your patch. At all.

Why are you surprised? Do companies want to hire "honest" people whose CVs were written by some LLM?

KritVutGu commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

quotemstr · 3 days ago

As a project maintainer, you shouldn't make rules unenforceable rules that you and everyone else know people will flout. Doing so comes makes you seem impotent and diminishes the respect people have for rules in general.

You might argue that by making rules, even futile ones, you at least establish expectations and take a moral stance. Well, you can make a statement without dressing it up as a rule. But you don't get to be sanctimonious that way I guess.

KritVutGu · 3 days ago

> As a project maintainer, you shouldn't make rules unenforceable rules

Total bullshit. It's totally fine to declare intent.

You are already incapable of verifying / enforcing that a contributor is legally permitted to submit a piece of code as their own creation (Signed-off-by), and do so under the project's license. You won't embark on looking for prior art, for the "actual origin" of the code, whatever. You just make them promise, and then take their word for it.

KritVutGu commented on AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions github.com/ghostty-org/gh... · Posted by u/freetonik

wahnfrieden · 3 days ago

You should care. If someone submits a huge PR, you’re going to waste time asking questions and comprehending their intentions if the answer is that they don’t know either. If you know it’s generated and they haven’t reviewed it themselves, you can decide to shove it back into an LLM for next steps rather than expect the contributor to be able to do anything with your review feedback.

Unreviewed generated PRs can still be helpful starting points for further LLM work if they achieve desired results. But close reading with consideration of authorial intent, giving detailed comments, and asking questions from someone who didn't write or read the code is a waste of your time.

That's why we need to know if a contribution was generated or not.

KritVutGu · 3 days ago

You are absolutely right. AI is just a tool to DDoS maintainers.

Any contributor who was shown to post provably untested patches used to lose credibility. And now we're talking about accommodating people who don't even understand how the patch is supposed to work?