I think everyone is getting extremely legalistic about other projects’ AI policies on their behalf. No one wants the actual output of the AI, especially unchecked. But if you read the output and actually understand it - a pretty minimal bar for a contribution - and then fix the thing yourself, it has none of the associated issues with AI PRs.
Well great, then they can write that in their policy instead of “absolutely no AI”!
To avoid arguing with strawmen let’s stick with the actual example Simon provided. The word “absolutely” doesn’t appear anywhere. Here are some quotes:
Pallets is affected by a large increase in low quality contributions generated with LLM (large language model) or “AI” (artificial intelligence) tools.
There’s the motivating problem behind the ban. It’s certainly one we can all understand, right?
We strongly encourage everyone to participate and contribute without using LLM or AI tools.
That’s a “strongly encourage,” not an “absolutely no,” which seems intentionally weakened to provide a tiny bit of space for exercising judgement.
This policy applies to all interactions with our projects and community, not only code and pull requests. This includes code, documentation, tests, PR descriptions, comments, reviews, answers, and all other interactions.
“Interactions with our projects and community” - note that they are specifying interactions between people here. You shouldn’t subject other people to AI output under this policy. It says nothing about using them to help you understand something. The requirement to understand is still there, as it should be.
When you choose to use an LLM tool to generate output, you look like every other person who did so, rather than a unique contributor. Therefore, you inherit the distrust maintainers have based on every prior low quality interaction that looked exactly like yours.
So actually the vast majority of the policy is explaining the harm caused by generated output. We’ve all seen large chunks of generated output and know exactly what they mean.
In most cases a lot of work goes into crafting these policies, which are extremely controversial right now, and they are very descriptive, tell you what problems they’re solving, and are nuanced. That effort seems wasted when people argue with a caricature of them instead of what they actually say.
I mean, tbh I wouldn’t contribute to this project because this is a weird policy in the sense that it only actually mandates two things:
Do not use LLMs to translate or improve communication
“Carefully consider” ESQ issues before using them.
Does that mean I can make LLM PRs? Well they’re telling me I am “likely to be blocked”… is that a no? Will they say, “fair cop, it’s a good LLM PR but we’ll block you now”? I think this policy is written so carefully and defensively that it doesn’t actually tell the contributor what to do and what not to do. It’s hard to have an opinion on what it’s saying because it’s not actually saying much.
They were IMO super clear about this exact point too:
If you are a new contributor, do not use LLM or AI tools to contribute at all; you do not have the trust or experience to take responsibility for what is generated.
So no, you can’t. And this is a completely pragmatic stance for them that balances the harm they’re receiving with the risk of not getting some potential quality contributions.
Well great, then they can write that in their policy instead of “absolutely no AI”!
score 1 · canonical
To avoid arguing with strawmen let’s stick with the actual example Simon provided. The word “absolutely” doesn’t appear anywhere. Here are some quotes:
There’s the motivating problem behind the ban. It’s certainly one we can all understand, right?
That’s a “strongly encourage,” not an “absolutely no,” which seems intentionally weakened to provide a tiny bit of space for exercising judgement.
“Interactions with our projects and community” - note that they are specifying interactions between people here. You shouldn’t subject other people to AI output under this policy. It says nothing about using them to help you understand something. The requirement to understand is still there, as it should be.
So actually the vast majority of the policy is explaining the harm caused by generated output. We’ve all seen large chunks of generated output and know exactly what they mean.
In most cases a lot of work goes into crafting these policies, which are extremely controversial right now, and they are very descriptive, tell you what problems they’re solving, and are nuanced. That effort seems wasted when people argue with a caricature of them instead of what they actually say.
score 2 · canonical
I mean, tbh I wouldn’t contribute to this project because this is a weird policy in the sense that it only actually mandates two things:
Does that mean I can make LLM PRs? Well they’re telling me I am “likely to be blocked”… is that a no? Will they say, “fair cop, it’s a good LLM PR but we’ll block you now”? I think this policy is written so carefully and defensively that it doesn’t actually tell the contributor what to do and what not to do. It’s hard to have an opinion on what it’s saying because it’s not actually saying much.
score 1 · canonical
They were IMO super clear about this exact point too:
So no, you can’t. And this is a completely pragmatic stance for them that balances the harm they’re receiving with the risk of not getting some potential quality contributions.
score 1 · canonical
That’s the sort of sentence I’d have loved to see in the summary, not the explanation.
score 1 · canonical