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Haiku should rethink that AI rule. Put very high code quality gates in place, sure, but Haiku in particular is a very low-velocity project and AI could help the

Haiku should rethink that AI rule. Put very high code quality gates in place, sure, but Haiku in particular is a very low-velocity project and AI could help them so much. There is no reason you can't produce high-quality code with AI conformant to your style guidelines and structural preferences, it just takes a lot more effort than the slop.

LeFantome 19d ago
I imagine that their issue is reviewer bandwidth. If all submissions were high-quality, it would probably work. But that is probably unlikely. Maybe the project could host a searchable directory of AI contributions hosted at external GitHub repos or something.
- hvb2 19d ago
  > I imagine that their issue is reviewer bandwidth. This feels to me as the real bottleneck in general. Maybe along with thinking through what to code/prompt. I don't need more tokens or automated generation of PRs, I'm already at capacity for the care and understanding I want to have for code I own.
- SyneRyder 19d ago
  My understanding is that the AI policy is more to do with issues of copyright and code provenance. They want to make sure that all of their code is cleared with no risk of accidentally using 'stolen' code or GPL code repeated by an AI. I can at least understand the policy. I think there's other opinions around AI use there as well, but I'll back off from that. I didn't mean for my post to become top voted, when we should be celebrating Haiku reaching Beta 6. I'm just disappointed that for me, R1/b6 has been a very big regression, right at a time when I've been using AI to make all the software I write cross-compatible with Haiku via Go & SDL, and even use AI to write drivers so more of my hardware works on Haiku... and instead, now I can barely even boot the system.
  - jbverschoor 19d ago
    OpenAI at least provides legal indemnification against those claims
shevy-java 19d ago
I have no qualitative opinion as to whether the Haiku team should reconsider the AI rule or not, but you select about just one possible advantage. There may be disadvantages using AI. One that keeps on happening is that real humans use AI slop spam to pester other humans with it. > There is no reason you can't produce high-quality code with AI conformant to your style guidelines and structural preferences, it just takes a lot more effort than the slop. It's not just code though. There are humans who deliberately and actively use AI slop to spam people. I saw this first on gobolinux, then on prawn, then on the ffmpeg mailing list. There are really good reasons why many humans dislike the proliferation of AI slop spam. > Haiku in particular is a very low-velocity project and AI could help them so much I am not entirely certain about that. If AI were to work so well, Haiku-AI could have already been insta-spawned and auto-fixed everything. Clearly this does not work, so I am unconvinced that AI is the final solution to everything - at the least right now. What is also unfortunate about Haiku is that things such as ruby do not work by default. Ruby even works on windows, though on Linux it is much more convenient to use.
cardanome 19d ago
No one is trying to get rich from working on Haiku. They are doing it for fun, as a passion project. Sure AI would help with velocity but velocity is not the only goal. Journey before destination. Also: Open source is about relationships. Reviewing code sucks. However at least reviewing code from humans allows you connect and learn from each other. You get to mentor someone. Build a relationship and trust. They learn and grow and maybe someday can also review other people's code. Nowadays with lots of low effort merge requests and spam it is already easy to burn out. Now add AI. Yeah, no. Why should anyone review AI slop for free. Why? It is the prefect solution to burn your contributors out.
ethin 19d ago
I'm curious why velocity is sooooo important. Every single AI discussion that I've read always always always mentions velocity or development speed as though that somehow is the ultimate goal. Why does it matter if your velocity isn't as fast as everyone else? Maybe taking things slowly might actually be a good thing. I'm not at all trying to be overly critical or pissy; I'm genuinely curious as to why this is always the gain that AI brings as though it matters (or, rather, this is how it's always stated in one way or another). So I come from a place of confusion when asking this. Why should I care if you can write 100000 or 1000000 lines of code and push out 10 billion commits per minute? (Yes, I am intentionally exaggerating here to prove a point.) If anything, I would argue that increased velocity just brings about recklessness and unnecessary churn instead of accomplishing anything useful.
- paulryanrogers 19d ago
  Velocity of LoC isn't important. Velocity of user visible improvements can matter if a project feeds off of usage and popularity. Or at least that velocity matters until the OS is capable enough to satisfy the user base.
  - ethin 19d ago
    I... Don't agree with this. If your users have followed your projects developments even remotely reasonably, you taking a few months to implement something or to figure something out is not a sign that the project is dead. It would be one thing if your project was completely inactive for like 2-3 years.
    - paulryanrogers 19d ago
      Haiku OS has gone up to 6y between releases. While not entirely inactive in that time, lurkers who aren't as motivated to dig for signs of life could reasonably conclude the project is inactive. For example, I'm a big fan of DOSBox. And while the core project still has some code check-in's from time to time, its last release was 7ya. Now I use and follow forks because they're consistently releasing useful features and fixes.
tyre 19d ago
I think the most productive thing is: 1. Read rules about not using AI 2. Reflect upon and understand why they exist 3. Develop software however the f*ck you want 4. Ensure it is high quality 5. Open a PR 6. Don’t tell anyone (i.e. don’t do the things people hate about AI-assisted code) People are going to get made at this take but come on, we’re trying to build things. Use the hacker spirit. Make things that solve problems.
alex_john_m 19d ago
What is a high code quality gate? Besides telling the AI it's an expert and to build perfect code?

LeFantome 19d ago

I imagine that their issue is reviewer bandwidth. If all submissions were high-quality, it would probably work. But that is probably unlikely. Maybe the project could host a searchable directory of AI contributions hosted at external GitHub repos or something.

hvb2 19d ago
> I imagine that their issue is reviewer bandwidth. This feels to me as the real bottleneck in general. Maybe along with thinking through what to code/prompt. I don't need more tokens or automated generation of PRs, I'm already at capacity for the care and understanding I want to have for code I own.
SyneRyder 19d ago
My understanding is that the AI policy is more to do with issues of copyright and code provenance. They want to make sure that all of their code is cleared with no risk of accidentally using 'stolen' code or GPL code repeated by an AI. I can at least understand the policy. I think there's other opinions around AI use there as well, but I'll back off from that. I didn't mean for my post to become top voted, when we should be celebrating Haiku reaching Beta 6. I'm just disappointed that for me, R1/b6 has been a very big regression, right at a time when I've been using AI to make all the software I write cross-compatible with Haiku via Go & SDL, and even use AI to write drivers so more of my hardware works on Haiku... and instead, now I can barely even boot the system.
- jbverschoor 19d ago
  OpenAI at least provides legal indemnification against those claims

shevy-java 19d ago

I have no qualitative opinion as to whether the Haiku team should reconsider the AI rule or not, but you select about just one possible advantage. There may be disadvantages using AI. One that keeps on happening is that real humans use AI slop spam to pester other humans with it. > There is no reason you can't produce high-quality code with AI conformant to your style guidelines and structural preferences, it just takes a lot more effort than the slop. It's not just code though. There are humans who deliberately and actively use AI slop to spam people. I saw this first on gobolinux, then on prawn, then on the ffmpeg mailing list. There are really good reasons why many humans dislike the proliferation of AI slop spam. > Haiku in particular is a very low-velocity project and AI could help them so much I am not entirely certain about that. If AI were to work so well, Haiku-AI could have already been insta-spawned and auto-fixed everything. Clearly this does not work, so I am unconvinced that AI is the final solution to everything - at the least right now. What is also unfortunate about Haiku is that things such as ruby do not work by default. Ruby even works on windows, though on Linux it is much more convenient to use.

cardanome 19d ago

No one is trying to get rich from working on Haiku. They are doing it for fun, as a passion project. Sure AI would help with velocity but velocity is not the only goal. Journey before destination. Also: Open source is about relationships. Reviewing code sucks. However at least reviewing code from humans allows you connect and learn from each other. You get to mentor someone. Build a relationship and trust. They learn and grow and maybe someday can also review other people's code. Nowadays with lots of low effort merge requests and spam it is already easy to burn out. Now add AI. Yeah, no. Why should anyone review AI slop for free. Why? It is the prefect solution to burn your contributors out.

ethin 19d ago

I'm curious why velocity is sooooo important. Every single AI discussion that I've read always always always mentions velocity or development speed as though that somehow is the ultimate goal. Why does it matter if your velocity isn't as fast as everyone else? Maybe taking things slowly might actually be a good thing. I'm not at all trying to be overly critical or pissy; I'm genuinely curious as to why this is always the gain that AI brings as though it matters (or, rather, this is how it's always stated in one way or another). So I come from a place of confusion when asking this. Why should I care if you can write 100000 or 1000000 lines of code and push out 10 billion commits per minute? (Yes, I am intentionally exaggerating here to prove a point.) If anything, I would argue that increased velocity just brings about recklessness and unnecessary churn instead of accomplishing anything useful.

paulryanrogers 19d ago
Velocity of LoC isn't important. Velocity of user visible improvements can matter if a project feeds off of usage and popularity. Or at least that velocity matters until the OS is capable enough to satisfy the user base.
- ethin 19d ago
  I... Don't agree with this. If your users have followed your projects developments even remotely reasonably, you taking a few months to implement something or to figure something out is not a sign that the project is dead. It would be one thing if your project was completely inactive for like 2-3 years.
  - paulryanrogers 19d ago
    Haiku OS has gone up to 6y between releases. While not entirely inactive in that time, lurkers who aren't as motivated to dig for signs of life could reasonably conclude the project is inactive. For example, I'm a big fan of DOSBox. And while the core project still has some code check-in's from time to time, its last release was 7ya. Now I use and follow forks because they're consistently releasing useful features and fixes.

tyre 19d ago

I think the most productive thing is: 1. Read rules about not using AI 2. Reflect upon and understand why they exist 3. Develop software however the f*ck you want 4. Ensure it is high quality 5. Open a PR 6. Don’t tell anyone (i.e. don’t do the things people hate about AI-assisted code) People are going to get made at this take but come on, we’re trying to build things. Use the hacker spirit. Make things that solve problems.

alex_john_m 19d ago

What is a high code quality gate? Besides telling the AI it's an expert and to build perfect code?