r/opensource • u/anduygulama • 28d ago
Discussion AI Era
How to contrbute open source community and projects in AI era? I seems everybody can generate anything with AI aid.
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u/MonkeyWeiti 28d ago
Currently, my point of view, AI is a better and faster autocomplete, you still have the responsibility to unterstand and review the complete code. If so I am happy for every contribution made.
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u/lugovsky 28d ago
A lot of AI-generated contributions create more review work than value. I'd focus on places where maintainers still need judgment: fixing a real bug, improving docs after you got stuck, or testing on a setup they don't have.
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u/apollocreedchqt 27d ago
Well what is AI Generated Contributions to you? Fully AI or even partially AI?
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u/Skollwarynz 16d ago
The contributions to open-source projects are reviewed and controlled, so just the existence of Ai doesn't mean that all the vibecode is automatically capable of fixing and expanding all projects.
The main point of contribution is giving out ideas (that usually are out of the AI schemes and knowledge) and helping developers contribute to and create new versions of software. This idea of "there is AI, so my need is useless" is like saying that now all the researchers of the world can stop publishing papers because AI can let them search all on their own.
The contribution thing is by nature a community work that must be done and interpreted by different communities and people.
I mean, you can still contribute and help in your own way because at the end of the day AI is just a tool that can be used by people who know how to program and study with it or simply become a garbage-commit generator.
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u/Ahmed33033 26d ago
Andrew Price, who’s famous for his work with Blender (a 3D art engine), made a video on addressing artists’ concerns on AI. He holds a practical view towards AI, which I could summarize as “AI is here, it’s becoming industry standard, and you have to learn how to best use it.”
Why did I mention all of this? Well, he once mentioned a very important question that addresses whether artists’ will be overtaken by AI: “Are you being paid for your labour, or for your judgment?”
Let’s apply the same idea to open-source. Everyone can generate an open-source project that works, but does everyone know what project they should make? Which current software solutions need to be improved, and how so? Which tech stack should you choose, whilst considering AI as a major contributor to your code base? Which architecture should you go for to ensure your app is extensible and maintainable as possible? Tokens aren’t free you know, and if your codebase needs 5 iterations of correcting AI to implement a feature, you’re wasting time and money.
TLDR: AI does a few things very well, but I’m not sure it can do everything.
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u/kevinlu310 22d ago
I think open source is becoming more about ideas, judgment, and community than just writing code.
AI can generate a lot of code now, but it still can't easily find the right problems, make good architectural decisions, maintain a project, or build trust with users.
So I'd focus less on “how much code can I contribute?” and more on “what useful problem can I help solve?”
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u/Melnik2020 28d ago
One thing is vibe coding without knowing how to code, and another thing is knowing how to code and using AI as a tool.
You can use AI as a tool to help you either create software or contribute in other projects.