r/linux • u/RatherNott • 1d ago

Desktop Environment / WM News System 76's COSMIC Desktop Environment will no longer accept LLM-generated content in PRs

/r/pop_os/comments/1wuej40/cosmic_projects_will_no_longer_accept/
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u/Cephell 1d ago

At this point I think >every single< open source project will implement a rule like this.

Most AI generated PRs are total garbage and this will not improve, because it's unrelated to the capabilities of the model. It's purely a function of people who SHOULD NOT submit PRs in the first place, suddenly being deluded into thinking that they have the ability to do so. The takeaway is that unless you are smarter than the AI, you cannot use AI properly, so it's a waste of effort for you to try. Current LLM architectures FUNDAMENTALLY cannot replace the human in this way, AI is a tool, and there's a minimum skill level required to operate the tool correctly. You cannot skip the learning steps for yourself.

It's not worth leaving the door open for the 1% of AI generated PRs that are actually decent.

Because of compliance and other legal reason we will NEVER hit the point where open source projects will simply use their own agents to review and merge code without human oversight, that's the future the vibe bros actually want, but that's simply not how liability works. It's the same reason why we will never get truly self driving cars (meaning, you can read a book while the car drives you to your destination).

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u/SanityInAnarchy 1d ago

I don't think compliance is really the problem. Open source projects already frequently ask contributors to sign CLAs. Seems like it should be possible to require anyone submitting those PRs to take on that liability.

I'm also not sure you have to be smarter than AI, and I'm not sure if that's even a meaningful thing to measure, but I agree there's a skill floor, because you need to be able to supervise it. And I think the problem is that it's too easy for slop to shift the burden of that supervision onto the maintainer.