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Hi, AI apologist here. This scenario is a problem with or without AI. You can’t drop a 13k line PR you don’t understand without prior discussion. There are many

Hi, AI apologist here. This scenario is a problem with or without AI. You can’t drop a 13k line PR you don’t understand without prior discussion. There are many ways to use AI. Your scenario (keynote speech) is a bad way to use it. Instead, a PR where you understand every line, whether you or an AI wrote it, should be fine. It would be indistinguishable from human generated code. AI is a tool like any other. I hire a carpenter who knows how to build furniture. Whether he uses a Japanese pullsaw or a CNC machine is irrelevant to me.

pluc 10mo ago
That's a fair answer. How do you stop people from doing it though? How do you stop it from becoming every lazy person's first reflex instead of every smart person's third?
- silverlake 10mo ago
  I don’t know. But at least you’ve identified the real problem: lazy people generating trash code. AI isn’t bad, people are.
  - zbentley 10mo ago
    We have historically intervened socially (via state regulation, taboo, or censure) in areas where the likelihood of misbehavior was high or the result of misbehavior was severe enough. For example: nuclear material possession or refinement; slavery; consumer-available systemic antibiotics; ozone-damaging coolants; dowries. Proscriptions on those are imperfect and inconsistent worldwide, but still prevalent. Each of them is a thing which benefited many people but whose practice enabled massive harm due to human failures (like laziness).
  - liamness 10mo ago
    I suppose the issue is that it's a multiplier for bad actors. It has become so much easier to generate plausible-looking code (or any number of things that would've previously required a knowledgeable human to make something that at least passes the sniff test, let's say legal documents as another example) and just overwhelm the limited bandwidth of good actors.
lawlessone 10mo ago
>You can’t drop a 13k line PR you don’t understand without prior discussion. How common was that before AI coding?
- silverlake 10mo ago
  Enough that stacked PRs are a thing. At my job people sometimes build large features on a branch for 6 months. Then it’s a massive PR and no one can review it.
  - DrammBA 10mo ago
    You seem to have answered the question "How common is a 13k line PR?" but that's not what the parent comment asked.

pluc 10mo ago

That's a fair answer. How do you stop people from doing it though? How do you stop it from becoming every lazy person's first reflex instead of every smart person's third?

silverlake 10mo ago
I don’t know. But at least you’ve identified the real problem: lazy people generating trash code. AI isn’t bad, people are.
- zbentley 10mo ago
  We have historically intervened socially (via state regulation, taboo, or censure) in areas where the likelihood of misbehavior was high or the result of misbehavior was severe enough. For example: nuclear material possession or refinement; slavery; consumer-available systemic antibiotics; ozone-damaging coolants; dowries. Proscriptions on those are imperfect and inconsistent worldwide, but still prevalent. Each of them is a thing which benefited many people but whose practice enabled massive harm due to human failures (like laziness).
- liamness 10mo ago
  I suppose the issue is that it's a multiplier for bad actors. It has become so much easier to generate plausible-looking code (or any number of things that would've previously required a knowledgeable human to make something that at least passes the sniff test, let's say legal documents as another example) and just overwhelm the limited bandwidth of good actors.

lawlessone 10mo ago

>You can’t drop a 13k line PR you don’t understand without prior discussion. How common was that before AI coding?

silverlake 10mo ago
Enough that stacked PRs are a thing. At my job people sometimes build large features on a branch for 6 months. Then it’s a massive PR and no one can review it.
- DrammBA 10mo ago
  You seem to have answered the question "How common is a 13k line PR?" but that's not what the parent comment asked.