Re: [PATCH v2] SubmittingPatches: add section about AI

>
> On 2025-10-01 at 14:02:50, Christian Couder wrote:
> > +[[ai]]
> > +=== Use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
> > +
> > +The Developer's Certificate of Origin requires contributors to certify
> > +that they know the origin of their contributions to the project and
> > +that they have the right to submit it under the project's license.
> > +It's not yet clear that this can be legally satisfied when submitting
> > +significant amount of content that has been generated by AI tools.
>
> Perhaps we'd like to write this:
>
>   It's not yet clear that this can be legally satisfied when submitting
>   significant amount of content that has been generated by AI tools,
>   so we cannot accept this content in our project.
>
> If we're going to have a policy, we need to be direct about it and not
> let people draw their own conclusions.  Many people don't have English
> as a first language and we don't want people trying to language lawyer.

> We could say something like this:
>
>   Please do not sign off your work if you’re using an LLM to contribute
>   unless you have included copyright and license information for all the
>   code used in that LLM.

> This allows the possibility that, say, Google trains an LLM entirely on
> their own code, such that there is only one copyright holder and they
> can license it as they see fit.  I don't think we _need_ to consider
> that case if we don't want to allow that (say, for code quality
> reasons), but we could if we wanted to.

> > +Another issue with AI generated content is that AIs still often
> > +hallucinate or just produce bad code, commit messages, documentation
> > +or output, even when you point out their mistakes.
> > +
> > +To avoid these issues, we will reject anything that looks AI
> > +generated, that sounds overly formal or bloated, that looks like AI
> > +slop, that looks good on the surface but makes no sense, or that
> > +senders don’t understand or cannot explain.
>
> I've definitely seen this.  LLMs also typically do not write nice,
> logical, bisectable commits, which I personally dislike as a reviewer.
>
> > +We strongly recommend using AI tools carefully and responsibly.
>
> I think this is maybe not definitive enough.  If we don't believe it's
> possible to sign-off when code is generated using LLMs, then we should
> say definitively, "Contributors may not use AI to write contributions to
> Git," or something similarly clear.

> Right now, this sounds too ambiguous and it might allow someone to write
> substantial code that they think is of good quality using an LLM because
> in their view that's careful and responsible, when we don't think that
> users can sign off on that and therefore that's not possible.  Telling
> people to use tools "carefully and responsibly" is like telling people
> to drive "a reasonable and prudent speed" without further qualification
> and then being surprised when they go 200 km/hr down the road.

> > +Contributors would often benefit more from AI by using it to guide and
> > +help them step by step towards producing a solution by themselves
> > +rather than by asking for a full solution that they would then mostly
> > +copy-paste. They can also use AI to help with debugging, or with
> > +checking for obvious mistakes, things that can be improved, things
> > +that don’t match our style, guidelines or our feedback, before sending
> > +it to us.
>
> This kind of use I feel is less objectionable.  I think it might be
> acceptable to use an LLM as a guide, a linter, or a first-pass code
> review.