I think a lot of the issue with these AI submissions isn't so much that there's AI slop code that'll ruin everything. I mean yes, I'm sure there's plenty of that. But a lot of these prominent open source projects were hoping that the people making the submissions actually knew what they were doing and were doing it mostly for the love of the project. Or because they work for a company that is also maintaining it.

The problem I believe, is the motivation behind all of this. I'm going to guess that a lot of the submissions aren't useful because:

• They don't actually fix anything. They may just be rearranging code around
• They attempt to address something that didn't need fixing
• They may have found a legitimate bug... but so did the 100+ other people who did the same thing.

And everyone wants their name on the Linux kernel repo log so they can go show an employer or someone "LOOK, I CONTRIBUTED TO LINUX!!!!11 AREN'T I LEET?"

shuffy_losysI think a lot of the issue with these AI submissions isn't so much that there's AI slop code that'll ruin everything. I mean yes, I'm sure there's plenty of that. But a lot of these prominent open source projects were hoping that the people making the submissions actually knew what they were doing and were doing it mostly for the love of the project. Or because they work for a company that is also maintaining it.

The problem I believe, is the motivation behind all of this. I'm going to guess that a lot of the submissions aren't useful because:

• They don't actually fix anything. They may just be rearranging code around
• They attempt to address something that didn't need fixing
• They may have found a legitimate bug... but so did the 100+ other people who did the same thing.

And everyone wants their name on the Linux kernel repo log so they can go show an employer or someone "LOOK, I CONTRIBUTED TO LINUX!!!!11 AREN'T I LEET?"

You hit a lot of the points, there are a few more though.

The config:

sometimes changing a variable fixes an issue, but it can break it for others. The issue I have seen are people try and compensate by being “less destructive” but really they just show there hand that they don’t fully understand the issue.

A variable change that fixes it for you but breaks for others actually probably requires detection logic before the function not a change to the function itself.

That leads me into the other issue that stems from such.

Maintenance:

You fixed the bug and AI didn’t even mangle it. But you still don’t understand the product, or flow, you might not even be a software dev and are straight vibe coding. That’s not what some maintainers want, they want or maybe even a project NEEDs someone that can help maintain it, and flyby patching even if it works by people that don’t stick around is just more code someone overworked needs to remember and understand for you.

I’m not really against AI or help. I am not even against nobody’s using it to try and help.

But it does cause churn and it can be exhausting.

Please contribute smartly. When in doubt open a draft PR, start a discussion. Use your own branch for your goal and let a maintainer take over your draft when they can.

Edit edit edit: also if for whatever reason you cannot help yourself. Ask your AI to follow the repo convention and try to match stylistically.

Non software folks maybe don’t know, but the robot will try to code by the book usually the languages standard, that’s fine, but anyone who is into coding and has met others knows that coding is like language and you can have accents and speech patterns.

Telling AI to read the repo first and match stylistically can help your code “fit”.

shuffy_losysI think a lot of the issue with these AI submissions isn't so much that there's AI slop code that'll ruin everything. I mean yes, I'm sure there's plenty of that. But a lot of these prominent open source projects were hoping that the people making the submissions actually knew what they were doing and were doing it mostly for the love of the project. Or because they work for a company that is also maintaining it.

The problem I believe, is the motivation behind all of this. I'm going to guess that a lot of the submissions aren't useful because:

• They don't actually fix anything. They may just be rearranging code around
• They attempt to address something that didn't need fixing
• They may have found a legitimate bug... but so did the 100+ other people who did the same thing.

And everyone wants their name on the Linux kernel repo log so they can go show an employer or someone "LOOK, I CONTRIBUTED TO LINUX!!!!11 AREN'T I LEET?"

Information overload is a thing.

on the implications of AI and how it destroys communities (not by me):
blog.fallible.net/it-breaks-a-village/

they should make a whitelist of selected maintainers who can submit manually reviwed llm generated code. anyone else should be banned from using it.

CaptainDodothey should make a whitelist of selected maintainers who can submit manually reviwed llm generated code. anyone else should be banned from using it.

If people were honest enough to always mark their work as vibed, we wouldn't be having this problem in the first place. But these spammers are already trying to game the system by pushing the slop, and the machines that produce said slop are being intentionally optimised to make telling them apart from humans even more difficult.
Noy to mention that the harm these tools bring isn't emerging from scaling (like, e.g., the internal combustion engine wrt polution), it's its multiplying effect of what harm a few numbers of sources can do.
God knows how many malicious individuals are running reputation/karma farming campaigns right now... :shadedshu:

It should be noted for those that didn’t look though, that he is not “stepping down” as in. “Not doing it.”

He is just not reviewing commits to the broader project and only doing ones in the parts he maintains.

Again:

I unfortunately lack the bandwidth to generally be able to offer review except in those areas I maintain.

I have separated the patches into areas maintained by David, Andrew, and Alice + Danilo, so each can take the patches relevant to the subsystems, for convenience.

Little sensationalized but that’s TPU now.

Solaris17It should be noted for those that didn’t look though, that he is not “stepping down” as in. “Not doing it.”

He is just not reviewing commits to the broader project and only doing ones in the parts he maintains.

Again:



Little sensationalized but that’s TPU now.

Exactly, he said he can't handle the amount of PR he has to review and splits the work between other maintainers.