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Is AI responsible for the committed code? Should AI be blamed when services go down due to the change? The answer is absolutely not - the developer is responsi

Is AI responsible for the committed code? Should AI be blamed when services go down due to the change? The answer is absolutely not - the developer is responsible whether the code was AI assisted or not, and the dev's name should be attached to it just like any change. The OP is right: these are ads, plain and simple, and it's a dark pattern for these companies to have attribution enabled by default

lacewing 4mo ago
"Sent from my iPhone" But of course, owning an iPhone early on was seen as prestigious. Using an LLM is... not? Many people really don't want the world to know. For blogs in particular, the urge to have an LLM generate the entire thing and then post it under your name seems to be really difficult to resist.
- intentfy 4mo ago
  If you're turning commit attribution off, you're definitely turning iphone signatures off too.
- dalemhurley 4mo ago
  Nice deflection there, why can’t both things be bad?
  - lacewing 4mo ago
    I don't know what you're saying. This is the second or third HN post I'm seeing this month along the lines of "how dare AI companies flag my code as AI-generated". I just don't remember similar complaints about the iPhone footer. Not many HNers complain about The North Face putting the text "The North Face" on their hoodies either. Or Honda putting their logo on the car. The reasons for this difference are interesting. The fact that companies put their logos / brands on stuff is a lot less interesting to me. You can call it bad, but again, why is this instance worse?
    - port11 4mo ago
      Plenty of people turned off the iPhone thingie once they figured out where the setting was (kinda buried). Plenty of people don’t like logos. And some do, because they tie their identity with brands. Maybe in the future some of us will tie our identities to specific agents/LLMs. To each their own. I don’t have clothing with logos, I find it gross. And you also don’t know I’ve sent you an email from an iPhone. Ça va.
SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago
I don't agree at all. I think it was a dark pattern when attribution was not enabled by default and angrily demanded it from everyone who sent me AI-generated code. It's not OK to declare sole authorship of something that you did not in fact author simply because you're volunteering to take responsibility for it.
- cautiouscat 4mo ago
  The dark pattern was adding the name of the product. An acceptable pattern would be “Written with the help of an LLM”.
  - neilv 4mo ago
    I disagree. Imagine a human co-author on a work. "Written with a co-author" would not be sufficient attribution.
    - cautiouscat 4mo ago
      That’s Apples to Oranges. Me saying “Co-authored by Joe Smith” gives the human, Joe Smith, possible exposure and definite credit. “Co-authored by Copilot” gives a multi billion dollar corp free advertising. I don’t care about them. I do care about Joe though.
      - neilv 4mo ago
        Positive credit is not the only purpose of attribution. There's also the named authors not taking credit for something they didn't fully do, regardless of whether the credit goes to someone else. There's also traceability, if the authors/provenance needs to be considered because of some kind of problem or potential problem -- technical, legal, security, or otherwise.
        bigyabai 4mo ago
        > There's also the named authors not taking credit for something they didn't fully do Advertising in git commits is not ever going to substantially discredit these people or hold them accountable.
add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago
It's not the gun's responsibility when you shoot it but we still need to have discussion and rules about guns. Enough with this tired, worthless semantics argument.
- smeej 4mo ago
  And there is something useful about being able to trace the ballistics back to find out which gun was responsible for the shot, as a key to who was wielding it and is ultimately responsible for its use.
awesome_dude 4mo ago
When a paper is submitted to a reputable publication references are demanded. You have to let people know where your ideas are supported, or even come from. To do anything else is plagiarism. AI isn't a co-contributer - but it should be referenced - just like a link to a Stack Overflow comment when that's the source of code. Having AI referenced in the commit is (IMO) best practice - but only co-contributer attributes are available (for now)
- dalemhurley 4mo ago
  Disagree, I never attributed Laravel Artisan or all the other code generators. Right now you could run Laravel new app (replace with any new framework) and Claude/Cursor/Codex git commit will claim to of created the code.
  - awesome_dude 4mo ago
    To be fair I've never used Laravel - but I do have a memory of code generators/scaffolders inserting files that made clear they were responsible for work /* * NOTE: This class is auto generated by OpenAPI Generator (https://openapi-generator.tech https://openapi-generator.tech). * Do not edit the class manually. */
- sdevonoes 4mo ago
  Do I need to write “coauthored by protoc” when pushing grpc changes? “Coauthored by gofmt” when formatting? “Coauthored by React when using npx create-next-app”? No. So, same goes for ai
  - awesome_dude 4mo ago
    Have a look at the top of the files generated by protoc bud ;) It's not in the git commit, it's in the files themselves - is that what you want for AI instead?
johnfn 4mo ago
If a particular AI provider is responsible for a disproportionate amount of buggy code I absolutely want to know that. Perhaps we'll switch providers. Sure, this will be flagged in CR too, but I would want to see trends over time. I don't know why you wouldn't want to track this information.

lacewing 4mo ago

"Sent from my iPhone" But of course, owning an iPhone early on was seen as prestigious. Using an LLM is... not? Many people really don't want the world to know. For blogs in particular, the urge to have an LLM generate the entire thing and then post it under your name seems to be really difficult to resist.

intentfy 4mo ago
If you're turning commit attribution off, you're definitely turning iphone signatures off too.
dalemhurley 4mo ago
Nice deflection there, why can’t both things be bad?
- lacewing 4mo ago
  I don't know what you're saying. This is the second or third HN post I'm seeing this month along the lines of "how dare AI companies flag my code as AI-generated". I just don't remember similar complaints about the iPhone footer. Not many HNers complain about The North Face putting the text "The North Face" on their hoodies either. Or Honda putting their logo on the car. The reasons for this difference are interesting. The fact that companies put their logos / brands on stuff is a lot less interesting to me. You can call it bad, but again, why is this instance worse?
  - port11 4mo ago
    Plenty of people turned off the iPhone thingie once they figured out where the setting was (kinda buried). Plenty of people don’t like logos. And some do, because they tie their identity with brands. Maybe in the future some of us will tie our identities to specific agents/LLMs. To each their own. I don’t have clothing with logos, I find it gross. And you also don’t know I’ve sent you an email from an iPhone. Ça va.

SpicyLemonZest 4mo ago

I don't agree at all. I think it was a dark pattern when attribution was not enabled by default and angrily demanded it from everyone who sent me AI-generated code. It's not OK to declare sole authorship of something that you did not in fact author simply because you're volunteering to take responsibility for it.

cautiouscat 4mo ago
The dark pattern was adding the name of the product. An acceptable pattern would be “Written with the help of an LLM”.
- neilv 4mo ago
  I disagree. Imagine a human co-author on a work. "Written with a co-author" would not be sufficient attribution.
  - cautiouscat 4mo ago
    That’s Apples to Oranges. Me saying “Co-authored by Joe Smith” gives the human, Joe Smith, possible exposure and definite credit. “Co-authored by Copilot” gives a multi billion dollar corp free advertising. I don’t care about them. I do care about Joe though.
    - neilv 4mo ago
      Positive credit is not the only purpose of attribution. There's also the named authors not taking credit for something they didn't fully do, regardless of whether the credit goes to someone else. There's also traceability, if the authors/provenance needs to be considered because of some kind of problem or potential problem -- technical, legal, security, or otherwise.
      - bigyabai 4mo ago
        > There's also the named authors not taking credit for something they didn't fully do Advertising in git commits is not ever going to substantially discredit these people or hold them accountable.

add-sub-mul-div 4mo ago

It's not the gun's responsibility when you shoot it but we still need to have discussion and rules about guns. Enough with this tired, worthless semantics argument.

smeej 4mo ago
And there is something useful about being able to trace the ballistics back to find out which gun was responsible for the shot, as a key to who was wielding it and is ultimately responsible for its use.

awesome_dude 4mo ago

When a paper is submitted to a reputable publication references are demanded. You have to let people know where your ideas are supported, or even come from. To do anything else is plagiarism. AI isn't a co-contributer - but it should be referenced - just like a link to a Stack Overflow comment when that's the source of code. Having AI referenced in the commit is (IMO) best practice - but only co-contributer attributes are available (for now)

dalemhurley 4mo ago
Disagree, I never attributed Laravel Artisan or all the other code generators. Right now you could run Laravel new app (replace with any new framework) and Claude/Cursor/Codex git commit will claim to of created the code.
- awesome_dude 4mo ago
  To be fair I've never used Laravel - but I do have a memory of code generators/scaffolders inserting files that made clear they were responsible for work /* * NOTE: This class is auto generated by OpenAPI Generator (https://openapi-generator.tech https://openapi-generator.tech). * Do not edit the class manually. */
sdevonoes 4mo ago
Do I need to write “coauthored by protoc” when pushing grpc changes? “Coauthored by gofmt” when formatting? “Coauthored by React when using npx create-next-app”? No. So, same goes for ai
- awesome_dude 4mo ago
  Have a look at the top of the files generated by protoc bud ;) It's not in the git commit, it's in the files themselves - is that what you want for AI instead?

johnfn 4mo ago

If a particular AI provider is responsible for a disproportionate amount of buggy code I absolutely want to know that. Perhaps we'll switch providers. Sure, this will be flagged in CR too, but I would want to see trends over time. I don't know why you wouldn't want to track this information.