It may surprise some people here to see that Andrew is warming up to using LLMs to discover bugs (inspired by results from SQLlite) and considers it a tool on the path to getting to bug free software.
> It may surprise some people here to see that Andrew is warming up to using LLMs to discover bugs (inspired by results from SQLlite) and considers it a tool on the path to getting to bug free software.
Someone in the thread below says their bug was closed because of mentioning that they use AI to confirm the bug they had encountered. Is he going to go back and reopen all of those now that he learned what pretty much everyone else already knew?
Nobody refuses penicillin because it came from mold in a dish. If an AI found a cure for a disease, people would ask one question: does it work?
Bug fixes should get the same treatment. A patch is either correct or it isn't. Projects that ban AI-written fixes outright are asking "who wrote this?" instead of "is this right?", and users live with the bug in the meantime.
I get why maintainers are fed up. Review time is scarce, and they're drowning in plausible-looking garbage. But that's a problem with low-quality submissions, not with AI as such. Require tests, require a human who vouches for the patch and will answer for it, and ban repeat offenders. Then hold every patch to that same bar, whoever or whatever wrote it.
But if I called you in the middle of the night to offer you something that will make every 9th sneeze on every second tuesday of March in a leap year less irritating your first reaction wouldn't be to thank me.
If I were making a product to try to eliminate sneezes, and someone said "I noticed an issue with it, and after I looked into your manufacturing process, I think I figured out what's causing it, so I double checked using an AI tool and it added further evidence that the defect I found is legitimate and would be solved by the solution I had come up with", it would be bizarre for me to say "I would have accepted this if you didn't spend the extra time at the end to verify your existing findings with an AI"
audunw · · focus · HN ↗
<a href="https://youtu.be/zwi5b5xSsKA?is=PTjJJjSnVMdRuZag" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/zwi5b5xSsKA?is=PTjJJjSnVMdRuZag
It may surprise some people here to see that Andrew is warming up to using LLMs to discover bugs (inspired by results from SQLlite) and considers it a tool on the path to getting to bug free software.
saghm · · focus · HN ↗
Someone in the thread below says their bug was closed because of mentioning that they use AI to confirm the bug they had encountered. Is he going to go back and reopen all of those now that he learned what pretty much everyone else already knew?
nelox · · focus · HN ↗
Bug fixes should get the same treatment. A patch is either correct or it isn't. Projects that ban AI-written fixes outright are asking "who wrote this?" instead of "is this right?", and users live with the bug in the meantime.
I get why maintainers are fed up. Review time is scarce, and they're drowning in plausible-looking garbage. But that's a problem with low-quality submissions, not with AI as such. Require tests, require a human who vouches for the patch and will answer for it, and ban repeat offenders. Then hold every patch to that same bar, whoever or whatever wrote it.
tstenner · · focus · HN ↗
saghm · · focus · HN ↗