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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

(github.com)
494 points todsacerdoti | 4 comments | 25 Jun 25 23:26 UTC | HN request time: 0.579s | source
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Aeolun ◴[26 Jun 25 01:28 UTC] No.44383414[source]▶
This seems absolutely impossible to enforce. All my editors give me AI assisted code hints. Zed, cursor, VS code. All of them now show me autocomplete that comes from an LLM. There's absolutely no distinction between that code, and code that I've typed out myself.

It's like complaining that I may have no legal right to submit my stick figure because I potentially copied it from the drawing of another stick figure.

I'm firmly convinced that these policies are only written to have plausible deniability when stuff with generated code gets inevitably submitted anyway. There's no way the people that write these things aren't aware they're completely unenforceable.

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1. luispauloml ◴[26 Jun 25 01:51 UTC] No.44383528[source]▶
> I'm firmly convinced that these policies are only written to have plausible deniability when stuff with generated code gets inevitably submitted anyway.

Of course it is. And nobody said otherwise, because that is explicitly stated on the commit message:

    [...] More broadly there is,
    as yet, no broad consensus on the licensing implications of code
    generators trained on inputs under a wide variety of licenses
And in the patch itself:

    [...] With AI
    content generators, the copyright and license status of the output is
    ill-defined with no generally accepted, settled legal foundation.
What other commenters pointed out is that, beyond the legal issue, other problems also arise form the use of AI-generated code.
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2. teeray ◴[26 Jun 25 02:13 UTC] No.44383639[source]▶
It’s like the seemingly-confusing gates passing through customs that say “nothing to declare” when you’ve already made your declarations. Walking through that gate is a conscious act that places culpability on you, so you can’t simply say “oh, I forgot” or something.

The thinking here is probably similar: if AI-generated code becomes poisonous and is detected in a project, the DCO could allow shedding liability onto the contributor that said it wasn’t AI-generated.

3. Filligree ◴[26 Jun 25 02:21 UTC] No.44383683[source]▶
> Of course it is. And nobody said otherwise, because that is explicitly stated on the commit message

Don’t be ridiculous. The majority of people are in fact honest, and won’t submit such code; the major effect of the policy is to prevent those contributions.

Then you get plausible deniability for code submitted by villains, sure, but I’d like to hope that’s rare.

4. raincole ◴[26 Jun 25 02:48 UTC] No.44383808[source]▶
I think most people don't make money by submitting code to QEMU, so there isn't that much incentive to cheat.