A user asked on the official Lutris GitHub two weeks ago “is lutris slop now” and noted an increasing amount of “LLM generated commits”. To which the Lutris creator replied:
It’s only slop if you don’t know what you’re doing and/or are using low quality tools. But I have over 30 years of programming experience and use the best tool currently available. It was tremendously helpful in helping me catch up with everything I wasn’t able to do last year because of health issues / depression.
There are massive issues with AI tech, but those are caused by our current capitalist culture, not the tools themselves. In many ways, it couldn’t have been implemented in a worse way but it was AI that bought all the RAM, it was OpenAI. It was not AI that stole copyrighted content, it was Facebook. It wasn’t AI that laid off thousands of employees, it’s deluded executives who don’t understand that this tool is an augmentation, not a replacement for humans.
I’m not a big fan of having to pay a monthly sub to Anthropic, I don’t like depending on cloud services. But a few months ago (and I was pretty much at my lowest back then, barely able to do anything), I realized that this stuff was starting to do a competent job and was very valuable. And at least I’m not paying Google, Facebook, OpenAI or some company that cooperates with the US army.
Anyway, I was suspecting that this “issue” might come up so I’ve removed the Claude co-authorship from the commits a few days ago. So good luck figuring out what’s generated and what is not. Whether or not I use Claude is not going to change society, this requires changes at a deeper level, and we all know that nothing is going to improve with the current US administration.
The thing that will change society is the fact this dude is covering up all the Claude LLM contributions, that transparency which fosters trust in projects is fundamentally broken. He is creating a narrative that will allow others to simply use LLM sourced code and hide it in human created code. I don’t like that, it’s pretty disgusting in my opinion, as people should be able to see every bit of code and know who is responsible for it. Mathieu Comandon’s integrity is shattered by this serious trespass and it is one that he shouldn’t be allowed to get away with. Put him on blast for that otherwise, others will try to do the same thing, potentially reducing the quality of open source projects. Claude LLM usage was already rancid enough…Enough for me to blacklist the whole thing.
As a lover of open source, I plan to skill up and start contributing myself…As there is a reality of not having enough time or people power to maintain such massive projects that have a big scope. I’m in the midst of learning the basics and figuring out what the best programming languages are to learn (Python is going to be my first). I don’t want the infection of LLMs to spread any more in the open source community…As there is no way that will turn out to be a net positive for the community.
It wouldn’t be such a big deal if you weren’t facing immense harassment for using these tools. I don’t blame him for saying fuck it. If the code works, and has been reviewed/modified/approved by a human, then who cares.
I care. GenAI and AI bullshit is general is a massive ethical, environmental, and socio-economic mine field.
The way it’s been developed, I’d call it more a superfund site.
Simply accepting the use of LLM tools is going to send the incorrect message, as that can be masked as approval. It will make techbros that peddle slopware bolder, however, I don’t condone harassment (be loud, clear, and don’t harass). It does matter because again, transparency is key and that builds trust in open source projects. You might not care, but there are a lot of people that feel integrity in the code base matters as you are running that shit on your machine if you install it. To hide the sources of code, that is closed source behavior, and we cannot even properly evaluate a lot of the code they sling.
I dunno if anyone has a right to be talking about “integrity of their machine” when that machine was built using slave labor and mining processes that heavily pollute poor countries.
One fellow internet user, I specifically mentioned, “integrity in the code base matters as you are running that shit on your machine if you install it”, not “integrity of their machine”. Two, I’m going to be real with you, while you are highlighting a very real concern…You are trying to distract from the harm that LLMs and how their usage in programming can break the integrity of code bases.
The rush to develop LLMs, the data centers that will fuel this boom, and the components used to create computational power…Is just as damaging to poor countries that have rich mineral resources, leading to heavy pollution due to high demand for those resources.
This whole push for LLM development is best summarized by iamthetot, who also replied to wagesj45, “I care. GenAI and AI bullshit in general is a massive ethical, environmental, and socio-economic mine field.”
While I fully agree with what you’re saying here, and that it should be stated, I personally believe that the only thing he’s done here is said the quiet part out loud.
Like other major projects of are stating that the main reason they don’t do a full AI ban is due to the fact that it’s increasingly difficult to be able to look at someone’s code contributions and say, yes, that’s AI versus that’s a human.
I recently made the swap-off of Sublime Text to Visual Studio Code because I was sick of the degradation in Sublime Text and there wasn’t any decent alternatives with the depreciation of atom a few years back.
I was amazed to find that OOtB visual code has a full on AI assisted coding setup with Ai assisted auto completion and suggestions and even has a chat box to talk with the model of choice. This setup by default doesn’t add any credits or attribution, and while isn’t anywhere near as intequate claude setup by default, it’s still AI assisted writing.
The only thing the public brigades are actually doing is making contributors hide that they are using it, which increases the problem like you mentioned.
A much better solution would be people stepping up to the plate and helping these projects, but it’s far easier to complain. I firmly understand why contributors have resorted to hiding the fact they use it, there’s far too much public outcry without enough support to not on most open sourced or publicly supported projects.
“The only thing the public brigades are actually doing is making contributors hide that they are using it, which increases the problem like you mentioned.”
As things are now, it would be best to eschew the use of LLMs; because LLMs are tainted with the dark, ignoble goals of Big Tech. In order to stop Big Tech’s plan, we need to object, reject, and force LLMs to become a money drain. Dropping LLMs would only help to burst this cursed bubble that techbros are desperately trying to keep inflated.
“A much better solution would be people stepping up to the plate and helping these projects, but it’s far easier to complain. I firmly understand why contributors have resorted to hiding the fact they use it, there’s far too much public outcry without enough support to not on most open sourced or publicly supported projects.“
If people are outright rejecting LLMs, it is better to drop these tools instead of embracing these things and using them in secret. Part of my drive to learn how to program is contributing to open source projects, but, the fact some of them embrace the use of LLMs to develop puts me off. However, despite this, learning to code and to contribute is of the utmost importance in order to help preserve the integrity of open source projects.
The things that are falsely called “AI” is a demotivating factor, as people start to feel the futility of learning if a thing that cannot think or feel might trump them and be used instead of them having a job in tech. It is going to create a brain drain event, because if there is not enough fresh blood staying interested in a field like programming and software dev…That will damage a lot of open source projects, and even the Linux Kernel. People age out and when those old heads die, all that institutional knowledge will go with them. As very few people will be able to carry the torch and that essential knowledge for the next generation. Big Tech doesn’t understand the full impact of their actions…They are greedy, disruptive fucks.