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In addition to what's already in the thread, I assume by now somebody has vibecoded an agent to scan GitHub for bounties and then automatically vibe up a corres

In addition to what's already in the thread, I assume by now somebody has vibecoded an agent to scan GitHub for bounties and then automatically vibe up a corresponding solution. Will be a fun source of spam for anyone who wants to do the right thing and pay people for good work.

BoorishBears 1y ago
I recently got my first AI generated PR for a project I maintain and it was honestly a little stressful. My first clue was that PR description was absurdly detailed and well structured... yet the actual changes were really scattershot. A human with the experience and attention to detail to produce that detailed description would likely also have broken it down into seperate PRs. And the code seemed alright until I noticed a small one-line change: a UI component had been replaced with a comment that stated "Insantiating component now requires X" Except the new insantiation wasn't anywhere. Their coding agent had commented out insantiating the component instead of figuring out dependency injection. That component was the container for all of the app's settings. - It's interesting because the PR wasn't entirely useless: individual parts of it were good enough that even if I took over the PR I'd be fine keeping them. But whatever coded it couldn't understand architecture well enough. I suspect whoever was piloting it probably tested the core functionality and assumed their small UI changes wouldn't break anything. I hope we normalize just admitting when most of a piece of code is AI generated. I'm not a luddite about these tools, but it also changes how I'll approach a piece of code. Things that are easy for humans get very hard for AI, and vice versa.
- zwnow 1y ago
  Not only admitting, it should be law to mark anything AI generated as AI generated. Even if AI contributed just a tiny bit. I dont want to use AI slop, and I should be allowed to make informed decisions based on that preference.
  - scrollaway 1y ago
    Did you by any chance type this comment on a device that has autocorrect enabled?
    - zwnow 1y ago
      [flagged]
    - jangxx 1y ago
      Autocorrect is not generative AI in the way that anyone is using that word. Also autocorrect doesn't even need to use any sort of ML model.
      - scrollaway 1y ago
        Ah yes the duality of anti-AI crowds on HN. “GenAI is just fancy autocorrect”, and “autocorrect isn’t actually GenAI”. The thing is, if you’re talking about making laws (as GP is), your “surely people understand this difference” strategy doesn’t matter squat and the impact will be larger than you think.
        jangxx 1y ago
        You don't seem to understand what people mean when they say "AI is just fancy autocorrect". People talk about the little word suggestions over the keyboard, not about correcting spelling. And yes, of course those suggestions are going to be provided by some sort of ML model, and yes if you actually write a whole article just using them, it should be marked as AI generated, but literally no one is doing that. Maybe because it's not fancy enough autocorrect. Either way, this is not the gotcha you think.
        NewsaHackO 1y ago
        But the original poster said: >Even if AI contributed just a tiny bit. Which would imply autocorrect should be reported as AI use.
- artursapek 1y ago
  I can’t stand people who open a pull request and ask for review without first reviewing their own diff. They should have caught that themselves.
- jillesvangurp 1y ago
  > I hope we normalize just admitting when most of a piece of code is AI generated. People using AI tools in their work is becoming normal. In the end, it doesn't matter how the code is created if the code works and is otherwise high quality. The person contributing is responsible for checking the quality of their contributions. Generally, a pull request that changes half the system for no good reason without good motivation is clearly not acceptable in most OSS systems. Likewise, a pull request that ignores existing design and conventions is also not acceptable. If you do such a pull request manually, it will probably also get rejected and get told off by repository maintainers. The beauty of the pull request system is that it puts the responsibility on the PR creator to make sure their pull request is good enough. Creating huge pull requests is generally not appreciated and creates a lot of review overhead. It's also good practice to work via the issue tracker and discuss your plans before you start the work. Especially with bigger changes. The problem here is not necessary AI but but people using AI to create low quality pull requests and people not communicating properly. I've not yet received any obvious AI generated pull requests on any of my projects. But I've used codex on my own projects for a few pull requests. I'd probably disclose that fact if I was going to contribute something to somebody else's code base and would also take the time to properly clean up the pull request and make sure it delivers as promised.

BoorishBears 1y ago

I recently got my first AI generated PR for a project I maintain and it was honestly a little stressful. My first clue was that PR description was absurdly detailed and well structured... yet the actual changes were really scattershot. A human with the experience and attention to detail to produce that detailed description would likely also have broken it down into seperate PRs. And the code seemed alright until I noticed a small one-line change: a UI component had been replaced with a comment that stated "Insantiating component now requires X" Except the new insantiation wasn't anywhere. Their coding agent had commented out insantiating the component instead of figuring out dependency injection. That component was the container for all of the app's settings. - It's interesting because the PR wasn't entirely useless: individual parts of it were good enough that even if I took over the PR I'd be fine keeping them. But whatever coded it couldn't understand architecture well enough. I suspect whoever was piloting it probably tested the core functionality and assumed their small UI changes wouldn't break anything. I hope we normalize just admitting when most of a piece of code is AI generated. I'm not a luddite about these tools, but it also changes how I'll approach a piece of code. Things that are easy for humans get very hard for AI, and vice versa.

zwnow 1y ago
Not only admitting, it should be law to mark anything AI generated as AI generated. Even if AI contributed just a tiny bit. I dont want to use AI slop, and I should be allowed to make informed decisions based on that preference.
- scrollaway 1y ago
  Did you by any chance type this comment on a device that has autocorrect enabled?
  - zwnow 1y ago
    [flagged]
  - jangxx 1y ago
    Autocorrect is not generative AI in the way that anyone is using that word. Also autocorrect doesn't even need to use any sort of ML model.
    - scrollaway 1y ago
      Ah yes the duality of anti-AI crowds on HN. “GenAI is just fancy autocorrect”, and “autocorrect isn’t actually GenAI”. The thing is, if you’re talking about making laws (as GP is), your “surely people understand this difference” strategy doesn’t matter squat and the impact will be larger than you think.
      - jangxx 1y ago
        You don't seem to understand what people mean when they say "AI is just fancy autocorrect". People talk about the little word suggestions over the keyboard, not about correcting spelling. And yes, of course those suggestions are going to be provided by some sort of ML model, and yes if you actually write a whole article just using them, it should be marked as AI generated, but literally no one is doing that. Maybe because it's not fancy enough autocorrect. Either way, this is not the gotcha you think.
        NewsaHackO 1y ago
        But the original poster said: >Even if AI contributed just a tiny bit. Which would imply autocorrect should be reported as AI use.
artursapek 1y ago
I can’t stand people who open a pull request and ask for review without first reviewing their own diff. They should have caught that themselves.
jillesvangurp 1y ago
> I hope we normalize just admitting when most of a piece of code is AI generated. People using AI tools in their work is becoming normal. In the end, it doesn't matter how the code is created if the code works and is otherwise high quality. The person contributing is responsible for checking the quality of their contributions. Generally, a pull request that changes half the system for no good reason without good motivation is clearly not acceptable in most OSS systems. Likewise, a pull request that ignores existing design and conventions is also not acceptable. If you do such a pull request manually, it will probably also get rejected and get told off by repository maintainers. The beauty of the pull request system is that it puts the responsibility on the PR creator to make sure their pull request is good enough. Creating huge pull requests is generally not appreciated and creates a lot of review overhead. It's also good practice to work via the issue tracker and discuss your plans before you start the work. Especially with bigger changes. The problem here is not necessary AI but but people using AI to create low quality pull requests and people not communicating properly. I've not yet received any obvious AI generated pull requests on any of my projects. But I've used codex on my own projects for a few pull requests. I'd probably disclose that fact if I was going to contribute something to somebody else's code base and would also take the time to properly clean up the pull request and make sure it delivers as promised.