LLM-generated content policy

[twpayne]

Sadly, I'm starting to observe users posting unreviewed LLM-generated content in my repos (not just chezmoi). Specifically, I have seen:

• Users posting LLM-generated answers to other users' questions.
• Users posting LLM-generated code to "help".
• Users posting LLM-generated code that doesn't work and demanding that I fix the code for them.

In all cases, the LLM-generated content is superficially plausible but fundamentally incorrect.

It takes more effort to understand and fix the LLM-generated content than it takes to write correct content in the first place. Posting unreviewed LLM-generated content is extremely disrespectful of my, and the other maintainers', time.

Note that I don't care if people use an LLM to help them generate content, but I do expect them to review it for correctness before posting it here.

Going forward, I propose the following policy:

• Users posting unreviewed LLM-generated content with the admission that they do not understand the code will receive a single warning. If they continue to post unreviewed LLM-generated content then I will ban them.
• Users posting unreviewed LLM-generated content without any admission will be immediately be banned without recourse.

I plan to update the developer guide and issue templates with clear warnings, but would like to hear feedback from others first.

[Lockszmith-GH]

I agree with your reasoning and choices.
Bullshit generators^* are useful tools, but are not a replacement for a brain.

I love LLMs when they are useful, the same way I love search engines when they get me to what I was looking for.

Thank you for not calling this AI - as that term really annoys the hell out of me.

^* I've adopted Richard Stallman's term for a recent talk of his, where he addresses Stochastic Parrots / LLMs as Bullshit generators. I hope more people would use it as well, it describes these tools very well. However, if you feel the word bullshit is too harsh, referring to them as Stochastic Parrots can do as well.

[twpayne]

Latest terrible LLM interaction:

LLM bot @jacks-sam1010 from latta.ai tries to generate a PR in response to an issue in #4157 (comment). The generated code does not even compile, and is also wrong on every other level. I copied the change into #4158 so people can see just how bad latta.ai is.

[arran4]

Hrm I feel like I should have written better documentation cross referencing the functions.

[twpayne]

I stumbled across an LLM-generated podcast about chezmoi today. It was bland, impersonal, dull, and un-insightful, just like every LLM-generated contribution so far.

I will update chezmoi's contribution guide for LLM-generated content to say simply "no LLM-generated content is allowed and if you submit anything that looks even slightly LLM-generated then you will be immediately be banned."

[arran4]

Was the postcast a NotebookLM produced one?

Seems a bit harsh considering it's stemming from a bad podcast rather than bad actors on the repo (contributors are unlikely to be the people that create the podcast too.) The way I see it there is a lot of low quality content out there AI or not, but AI just enable a floodgate of low effort (and resultingly quality) content. While I'm not a "authenticity-ist" (as an opposite to "result driven") I do think that human effort is what is missing in a lot of AI generated content. It's good for bulk filler, ie explanations that you need as part of your writing to make things more approachable, rather than the core of the writing itself. I think your previous policy was good.

[singiamtel]

Does this mean Copilot tab complete is banned too?

What about asking an LLM for advice and then writing all the code yourself?

[twpayne]

As long as I can't tell that you used an LLM then it's OK ;)

[norbertkeri]

All in favor of this policy, and I'm glad you are taking a stance.