AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

Isn't that a good thing?

It might encourage people to be dishonest, or to not contribute at all. Maybe that's fine for now, but what if the next generation come to rely on these tools?

What, building systems where we’re specifically incentivised not to disclose ai use?

Submitting a PR also means you’re not submitting code copied from elsewhere without calling that out and ensuring license compatibility, we don’t refer to that as incentivizing lying about the origin of submitted code.

Fraud and misrepresentation are always options for contributors, at some point one needs to trust that they’re adhering to the rules that they agreed to adhere to.

If you removed all PR’s from the world that included copy-pasted code from stackoverflow that wasn’t mentioned, you’d be removing a LOT of PR’s. It’s not even considered a problem to copy and paste code from stackoverflow among most devs as long as you have reviewed it and modified it where necessary for your purposes. AI should be treated like that, if it’s not, people will just hide it and do it anyway.

Just because many developers are irresponsible in their approach to incorporating others’ works doesn’t change how intellectual property actually works, and any project that actually cares (whether open or proprietary) will ensure that people understand their responsibilities.

What you’re saying is essentially the code equivalent of “I found this image via Google search so of course it’s OK to put into a presentation, it’s on the web so that means I can use it.” This may not be looked at too hard for an investor presentation, but if you’re doing a high profile event like Apple’s WWDC you’ll learn quickly that all assets require clearance and “I found it on the web” won’t cut it—you’ll be made to use a different image or, if you actually present with the unlicensed image, you could be disciplined or outright fired for causing the company liability.

It’s amazing how many people in this industry think it’s OK to just wing this shit and even commit outright fraud just because it’s convenient.

Your argument breaks down when you realise that doing simple operations will result in the exact same code anyway. If I want to pull the first word from a string, whether I write it myself or copy and paste it from stack overflow we’re going to likely literally result in the exact same line of code. It’s not the same as an image from google images, because that image has a far higher chance of being unique.

You can talk about how we should act and be all high and mighty all you like, but it’s just burying your head in the sand about the reality of how code is written.

Also, technically, I never said this made it perfectly ok. It’s just that it’s the reality we live in and if we got rid of everyone doing it we’d have to fire 99% of programmers.

I’ve been in this industry 30+ years working for both very small companies and some of the largest. I thus have a pretty good understanding of the reality of how code is written, and you’re the one burying your head in the sand: Companies care about the provenance of what you write, and if you lie about that—whether explicitly or through omission—and it’s discovered, you’re going to be in a world of hurt since you may be exposing the company to liability and also violating your employer’s trust.

You’re seriously trying to analogously solve teenage pregnancy by advocating for abstinence.

Look around. Do you see the majority of programmers getting fired for copying a line from stackoverflow or using AI?

You must either work in an ultra high security area or are so removed from the groundwork of most programming jobs that you don’t know how people do anything anymore. I’m not surprised you mentioned 30+ years, because that likely puts you squarely out of the trenches where the development is actually done.

Outside of like, the military or airplane software, companies really don’t care about provenance most of the time, their lack of processes to avoid looking into any of that are absolute PROOF of that. It’s don’t ask don’t tell out there.

You can be delusional all you like, it doesn’t change the reality of how most development is done.

Again, I didn’t say it’s a good thing, it’s just that it is reality.

As a side note, the company I work for actively encourages ai use in development, and this is really quite common now.

My last 20 years in the industry were at Apple.

Ahh, so you see and accept my points then.

No, I think you’re only exposed to a limited portion of the industry where people play fast and loose with IP provenance and as a result develop very bad habits that need to be broken when they enter an environment that takes it seriously.

I think you’ll find it’s a limited portion of the industry that takes it seriously, when the vast majority don’t. You’ve worked in one place for like 20 years and it’s one of the strictest places for this stuff, can’t you see that that might bias you somewhat?