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- Hacker News
- The question is: is such policy even enforceable? If someone is "clever" enough to drop em-dashes and some bold highlights how one would know if something is AI generated or not?by piokoch
- > Some parts of the policy are unenforceable. This is not a bug. The goal is not to catch every violation, but to create a clear bright-line rule: Disclosure is required for all public LLM text, unless specifically exempted by the policy. This allows moderators to identify violations based on actions, not on intent, and only consider intent when deciding how to respond.by duskdozer
- Good rules but Rust already has AI code in its codebase now.by satvikpendem
- Nobody's denying that, what is your point? Or are you assuming they're banning LLM code wholesale based on just the headline?by Cthulhu_
- I think LLM policies which ban usage are ultimately self-defeating. They neatly switch concerns about quality of contributions to concerns about "AI slop". These two things are not the same. But the biggest problem is that they ignore the (unevenly distributed) future.
The future: SWEs will no longer write code by hand. The era of hand coding is over. We only saw that for sure in the last 6 - 9 months. But it's over.
Many coders have not yet made this transition, true, but it's happening regardless. You may not like it, but as a coder, you will not be hired if you refuse these tools. You will look as ridiculous as an accountant that refuses to use spreadsheets.
For now, we're not there yet.
As a profession, we are learning how to deal with the massive influx of review work that occurs because of LLMs. The bottleneck has moved. And as of now, there aren't good answers. But there will be. We will figure it out, like we figured out CI/CD and agile.
So personally, I'd focus my policies much more on dealing with the issues that this new era presents, and how to make LLM contributions work, and I'd avoid banning LLMs.
by lukasco - You clearly didn't read the actual policy if you think they're banning llms.by cbarnes99
- > We have long had the problem that there are more people who want to write code than people willing to review it.
I think this is an important thing to mull over. The world is going to be a different place for those who wanted to write code but not review it compared to those who are willing to carefully review code.
- I really dislike every kind of rule that says something along the lines "if it's LLM generated you must self-disclose otherwise it is against the rules". Because this quickly leads to witch hunting and easy persecution of IC's under the pretense "it looks generated by an LLM" or they just investigate you and put you on cooldown from being able to contribute while they check for signs of "LLM-generated code". It's no different than laws giving any officer the right to violate your rights based on flaky probable cause "you have slurred speech therefore I will search your car to see any open containers". This can lead to a soft coup by anti-llm individuals which will make communities slowly drift towards a group of elitists that gatekeep any newcomer.by weli
- I sort of agree, but sort of not. I do agree that any use of AI should be disclosed, but I have also seen some subreddits where the top comments of every post is either raging about the use of AI, or arguing about AI when AI wasn't used.
It's just so tiresome
by ChrisRR - imho disclosing use of LLMs is just being transparent and honest. is it that hard? deliberately hiding this should absolutely get you in trouble, because trust is the most important thing to have in open-source
as you probably have seen in TFA, the policy does not ban LLM usage. its just asking for disclosure so that maintainers know how much effort was put in a PR
and, please, open-source maintainers owe us nothing. refusing to merge a patch is not the same as cops searching your car. this is merely maintainers trying to evaluate how they should spend their precious time
by nasso_dev - Thats why they also added the no harassing about LLM rule. Im not sure how the moderators will actually discern AI use, but I imagine if the code is high quality they dont actually care if its LLM, they just want to stop the obvious spam of drive-by PRs from first time contributors.by xboxnolifes
- I don't understand this obsession with clear cut categorization. Systems always have a human component and while we like to collectively deny this fact from a tech-sphere, there are always humans that will make the final call and if anything we should encourage the use of human trust and judgement.
We have focused so much on technological advancement, but our understanding of human systems and building an environment of trust that is not eroded by perverse incentives atrophies.
by DarkNova6 - You can’t be upset because they want to know the truth, seriously. When a project has concerns about generated code, it is for a reason.
- I don't disagree with you. I too hate disclosing LLM usage. I hate giving free advertising to trillion dollar corporations. There's also the fact people will probably look down on me for it and assume I'm incompetent because I used an LLM, and I've actually ended up sitting on reviewed and tested patches to open source projects because of this.
However, we should be polite and respect their house rules. They are being reasonable and even made an effort to preempt these exact objections:
> Harassment is not allowed.
> You may not harass people for using an LLM, regardless of whether or not their use is banned by the policy.
> Don’t try to be the police for whether someone has used an LLM. You are not required to “actively look” for whether an LLM was involved.
- In a nutshell: It's fine to use LLMs to answer questions, analyze, distill, refine, check, suggest, review. But not to create.by andsoitis
- Sounds like the beginning of the end of rust to me
AI is a jet engine - Banning is for creation is like saying "we require you to go by ship/car/propeller-plane"
Yes, a policy that says AI slop PRs will not be tolerated. But I've had AI track down real hard to find bugs in several projects and provide correct fixes. I've also had AI build new features and new products. The project that ignores this acceleration will eventually fall behind the ones that embrace it.
by socalgal2 - This implies that "create" is the hard part that we should not offload to machines.
But IME all of the other things are the hard part.
So basically it's fine to get the LLM to think for you and give you the answers as long as you understand Rust syntax well enough to type it all out yourself?
This also seems like it will produce worse code, because it's preventing the LLM from doing the easy/boring part that it's good at.
by thunky - Hmm, that doesn't sound too bad. So you basically get to use a tool to help with the tedious parts, without being allowed to use the same tool to pass off said tedium to others.
This closes the gap. A key insight. A load bearing difference.
Now, is writing code considered tedium, for a project like Rust?
by ares623 - Creation is still allowed:
>Pre-arranged, non-critical, high-quality, well-tested, and well-reviewed code changes that are originally created by an LLM are allowed, with disclosure.
by duskdozer - Yes, and I think the reasons set out in TFA are interesting, which on my reading are:
1) Code is the least interesting bit in some ways - they’re trying to build not only rust but a community of experts around rust which is able to maintain and improve it in the long term and the authors of prs need to understand the code deeply and show a willingness to be part of that long run. Llm-generated code even if it looks polished doesn’t indicate a human author who deeply understands it and is willing to be part of that long term maintenance.
2) They don’t have (and don’t want to enforce) a community consensus that llms are good or llms are bad. They just want some rules written down so everyone knows where they stand and people of either camp (and none) can get on with it.
Seems a pretty reasonable approach to me although I don’t really use rust much so don’t have a vested interest.
by seanhunter - > Harassment is not allowed. You may not harass people for using an LLM, regardless of whether or not their use is banned by the policy. You must follow the Code of Conduct at all times when interacting with the Rust project.
This policy I like.
by minimaxir - You know rustaceans hate anything LLM when mods have to make this a rule.by feverzsj
- The exact rules on LLM generated code submission live here:
https://forge.rust-lang.org/policies/llm-usage.html
https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/llm-guidance/writing.h...
> Pre-arranged, non-critical, high-quality, well-tested, and well-reviewed code changes that are originally created by an LLM are allowed, with disclosure.
They clearly put a lot of thought into this and it shows. Huge respect.
> New contributors cannot create a PR using an LLM unless they first talk with a reviewer.
New contributors do not have community connections. I don't know any rust-lang/rust reviewer.
What is the correct procedure for this?
> Harassment is not allowed.
> You may not harass people for using an LLM, regardless of whether or not their use is banned by the policy.
Refreshing take. Not a fan of heavy handed moderation, but I'm still very happy to see that they have this stance given the racism-tier insults I've gotten on forums without it.
I especially like this rule:
> Don’t try to be the police for whether someone has used an LLM. You are not required to “actively look” for whether an LLM was involved.
- > What is the correct procedure for this?
Get involved with the project before submitting PRs, participate in discussions, etc. But if it's a change you want to contribute, don't use an LLM to write it.
by Cthulhu_ - > What is the correct procedure for this?
in general to work on something that will get "into the rust compiler" it needs at least an RFC and then a Major Change Proposal [0]
in practice it starts with asking on zulip [1]
[0] https://forge.rust-lang.org/compiler/proposals-and-stabiliza...
[1] https://forge.rust-lang.org/how-to-start-contributing.html
by pas - > New contributors do not have community connections. I don't know any rust-lang/rust reviewer.
> What is the correct procedure for this?
there's a #llm-mentoring [0] Zulip stream linked in the dev-guide [1].
[0]: https://rust-lang.zulipchat.com/join/rlfvpemsaacs3pfi6kwqnqj... [1]: https://rustc-dev-guide.rust-lang.org/llm-guidance/writing.h...
by jynelson