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Who thinks they are contributing something when they do crap like that? Set up an AI to bomb a group working for free to do something they value. Gotta be a kid
by JoeAltmaier 2y ago
Who thinks they are contributing something when they do crap like that? Set up an AI to bomb a group working for free to do something they value. Gotta be a kid with no sense.
- Bluestein 2y agoI am trying - honestly - to wrap my head around it ... Who knows. Might be some sort of "distributed attack" against Open Source by some nefarious actor? I am still thinking about the "XZ Utils" fiasco. (Not implying they are related, anyhow).-
- llamaimperative 2y agoHave you been on the internet? There are plenty of just plain moronic people out there to produce (with the help of LLMs) ample bullshit to be able to clog approximately any quasi-public information channel. Such results used to require sophistication and funding, but that is no longer true
- Bluestein 2y agoAwful. See comment about "morons" upthread ...
- anon373839 2y agoI’d like to inject a personal gripe here, namely: the people who take the time to answer questions on Amazon with “I don’t know.” Why.
- Bluestein 2y ago"Elroy was here"
- stonogo 2y agoBecause Amazon sent them am email. When questions go unanswered, Amazon emails some of the prior purchasers asking them the question. These emails are constructed to look like they are personally being asked for help. So, why? Courtesy, believe it or not. Blame Amazon.
- anon373839 2y agoOh, that makes total sense.
- eddsolves 2y agoNa, it’s not intentionally malicious - people are just trying to pad their resumes for new roles while unemployed or as students. I did the same (not with AI, but picking up the low hanging easy tasks to add a few lines to my CV years ago).
- 0points 2y agoNo need to go there. There is a more simple explanation and it is being discussed in the comments. Kids trying to farm github fame using LLM:s.
- janice1999 2y agoIt's people, usually students, trying to pad out their GitHub activity and CVs.
- Bluestein 2y agoIt's an insidious incentive, in an age where an AI is going to look through your CV, and not much care - or be able to tell the difference ...
- esperent 2y agoIf the AI was told to care, identifying low grade or insignificant contributions is well within it's capabilities.
- Bluestein 2y agoGood point.-
- vouaobrasil 2y agoNot in 10 years when the contributions become more sophisticated. Like many other scenarios of this time, it's an arms race.
- esperent 2y agoIf the contributions become sophisticated enough to be actually good, then problem solved, right?
- vouaobrasil 2y agoNo, because the arms race will be using huge amounts of energy and resources so no, not problem solved.
- kichik 2y agoThey might be looking for some open-source fame. The contribution to their resume is more important than the contribution to the project.
- ramon156 2y agoThis was an issue without LLMs too, and it sucks. GH has a tag for "good first issue" which always gets snatched by someone who only cares about the contribution line. Sometimes they just let it sit for weeks because they forgot that they now have to actually do the work.
- 0points 2y agoI fixed a single word typo in a doc string in github.com/golang/go, resulted in a CONTRIBUTORS entry and a endless torrent of spam from "headhunters".
- hyhconito 2y agoI know a guy who does this. He finds a problem, then tells ChatGPT about it. Then ChatGPT elaborates it into dross. He says look at the magical output, without reading it or bothering to understand it. Then posts it to the vendor. The vendor gets mislead and the original issue is never fixed. Then I have to start the process again from scratch after 2 weeks are wasted on it. The root cause is that LLMs are a damage multiplier for fuckwits. It is literally an attractive hammer for the worst of humanity: laziness and incompetence. I imagine that could be weaponised quite easily.
- Bluestein 2y ago> The root cause is that LLMs are a damage multiplier for fuckwits. Reminds me of Eco's quote about giving the "village idiot" a megaphone. But, transposed to the age of AI.-
- hyhconito 2y agoIt's much worse than that. It's giving the village idiot something which turns their insane ramblings into something that is incredibly verbose and sounds credible but inherits both the original idiot's poor communication and the subtle ramblings of an electronic crackhead in it. Bring back the days of "because it's got electrolytes" because I can easily ignore those ones.
- fakedang 2y agoTo quote another frontpage article, it transforms the village idiot into a "Julius".
- hyhconito 2y agoOh shit I just read that and am utterly horrified because I've been through that and am going through it. I have instantly decided to optimise myself to retire as quickly as possible.
- 2y ago
- pimlottc 2y agoPeople do things like this because it makes your gamified GitHub metrics go up.
- LtWorf 2y agoYou could just do it onto fake projects created for metrics as well, so nothing real is harmed :D
- marcus0x62 2y agoI call those drive-by PRs. If you work on an even moderately popular project, you’ll end up with people showing up - who have never contributed before - and submitting patches for stuff like typos in your comments that they found with some auto scanning tool. As far as I can tell, there are people whose entire Github activity is submitting PRs like that. It would be one thing if they were diving into a big codebase, trying to learn it, and wanted to submit a patch for some small issue they found to get acquainted with the maintainers, or just contribute a little as they learned, but they drop one patch like that, then move on to the next project. I don’t understand the appeal, but to each their own, I guess.
- exsomet 2y agoGenuine curiosity - admittedly these sorts of “contributors” probably aren’t doing it out of a passion for FOSS or any particular project, but if it’s something that fixes an issue (however small) is that actually a net negative for the project? Maybe I have some sort of bias, but it feels like a lot of the projects I see specifically request help with these sorts of low-hanging-fruit contributions (lumping typos in with documentation).
- marcus0x62 2y agoI don't think these PRs are a net negative for a project - I've never turned one down, anyway. I just don't understand what the contributor gets out of the arrangement, other than Github badges. Some theories I've held: 1) They want/intend to contribute more and are starting small, but either get overwhelmed, lose interest, don't have enough time, etc. 2) They are students padding their resumes (making small PRs so they can say they contributed to x-number of open source projects.) 3) Its just the Github badges.
- ozim 2y agoOr it might be state threat actor trying to tire out people and then plant some stuff somewhere in between. Like Jia Tan but 100x more often or then getting their people to “help” cleaning up. You just underestimate evil people. We are long past “bored kid in his parents basement in a hoodie”. Any piece of OSS code that might end up used by valuable or even not so valuable target is of interest for them.
- Bluestein 2y agoI have got to say that - on a first, naive, approach - the whole situation hit me in a very "supply chain attack" way too.-
- codedokode 2y agoOn Hackerone you can get money for a bug report, could that be the reason? I think that the first sentence in report is probably written by a human and the rest by AI. The report is unnecessary wordy, has typical AI formatting and several paragraphs with detailed explanation of "you are absolutely right" are signs of a LLM.
- billy99k 2y agoI've been active on Hackerone for a decade. A good report written by a human has issues making it through. These AI written reports have no chance.
- RicoElectrico 2y agoIt's a cultural thing. In the absence of opportunities for good education and jobs cargo culting kicks in.