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Pop!_OS bans AI-generated code from much of its codebase

116 points · 167 comments · bundie

  1. sippingabonedry · · focus · HN ↗
    Completely performative.

    You build your OS atop thousands of open source packages, many of which contain AI generated code. Are you going to audit them one by one and remove offending packages? What about the ones you won't remove because the OS would be irreparably broken?

    1. HexDecOctBin · · focus · HN ↗
      This is a good idea, we should start a blacklist of open-source projects that are known to have used LLMs. There should be two universes of code, one for hand-typed code used by people who care about quality and one for slop used by those making trash.
      1. Fr0styMatt88 · · focus · HN ↗
        Yeah but that's just bad code in general, no? You can make good code with LLMs, you just have to actually engineer it and give up some of the velocity; which is just a bigger version of the same problem we've always had (yes, I get that code review can't scale).

        This is just really silly.

        The more I think about this the more I think it's like self-driving cars. We have this expectation that self-driving cars MUST be 101% safe and never get into any accidents, ever, before the technology is worth adopting. LLMs are the same -- it's like we think if you can't one-shot a prompt and get perfect software out of it, it's failed. You can choose to spend time getting the LLM to refine the code it's written, review the architecture, come up with an actual engineering process around the LLM. Yes that means you'll be producing less code per time spent -- which is a good thing.

      2. brokencode · · focus · HN ↗
        There was plenty of bad code long before LLMs came around. Let’s be real.

        Being hand written is no guarantee of high quality, just like using LLMs is no guarantee of low quality.

        1. bigstrat2003 · · focus · HN ↗
          Using LLMs is not a guarantee of low quality, but it does make low quality vastly more likely.
          1. brokencode · · focus · HN ↗
            Eh, not really. It just lowers the barrier for lazy people who never would have tried contributing before.

            I’ve read a lot of code hand-written by programmers. By smart and hard working people. And I know from experience that the code the average programmer writes is not great either.

    2. _heimdall · · focus · HN ↗
      It also doesn't answer the question of how they might even recognize LLM generated code in contributions to PopOS directly.

      I have yet to understand how maintainers can't distinguish beyond (1) PRs that literally include Claude co-author notes or (2) low quality code contribution regardless of the creator.

    3. driverdan · · focus · HN ↗
      It's not. Read the article, they have a good reason for banning it and it's not because they hate LLMs.
    4. 999900000999 · · focus · HN ↗
      I agree.

      PopOS is Ubuntu with extra problems. Ubuntu itself is fine, but then PopOS adds weirdness.

      Cosmic has been in beta for how long ?

      1. duped · · focus · HN ↗
        It's been out of alpha/beta for almost a year
      2. plqbfbv · · focus · HN ↗
        > Cosmic has been in beta for how long ?

        I daily drove the alphas before the betas, and of course there were a couple rough edges. But I had a minimal working desktop instead of sway or KDE/Gnome (too heavy).

        It has been releasing non-betas for a good year now, and it's been a smooth sailing.

      3. wookmaster · · focus · HN ↗
        Huh? Cosmic is out, there's some bugs still but its pretty nice.
    5. novafunc · · focus · HN ↗
      I don't think it's performative.

      They aren't saying that AI produces bad code or is terrible for the world in some way.

      It's mainly just resulting in a lot of PRs that they don't have enough time to review or features they don't plan to add.

    6. schipperai · · focus · HN ↗
      It sounds like what they are primarly aiming for is introducing backpressure in their own review pipelines.
    7. weare138 · · focus · HN ↗
      Unless you have some examples this is a straw man argument.
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