r/linux • u/TurbulentTopic39 • 4d ago

Development Flathub just reversed its AI-generated content ban, but developers still need to say they used it

https://www.xda-developers.com/flathub-just-reversed-its-ai-generated-content-ban-but-developers-still-need-to-say-they-used-it/
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u/ChickenWingBaron 4d ago

Any platform banning AI-assisted code is basically shooting themselves in the foot. The tech is extremely useful and undoubtedly here to stay. What we need is not a ban on this technology but a better way to determine if a project was made by an actual developer using AI as an assistant, or someone with no programming knowledge just vibe coding slop.

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u/Nalivai 4d ago

The tech is extremely useful and undoubtedly here to stay.

This is not as unquestionable position as you think. There is significant number of research that shows that relying on LLM feels like you're saving time, even when you actually take longer to do the same task. And that's with subsidized costs. There is a world when the bubble pops before we collectively lose our minds, and this overreliance on LLM will go away.
There is, unfortunately, also a world where we're all in hell of our own making.

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u/OsseusOccult 3d ago edited 3d ago

There was a study a year ago on some open source circles that I saw (I wish I could find it) that showed it dropped overall productivity about 27% because efficiencies gained were made up for by the actual review process being more difficult. I'll do some digging later for it.

I also love that a lot of the arguments for AI amount to "but what if you're an asshole and don't care about theft/weakening FOSS licenses or the environmental and psychological devastation?"

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u/ShuppaGail 3d ago

Yeah, with the speed AI is moving at, a study published a year ago (meaning it probably has data from like a year and a half ago) might as well have been published 15 years ago in almost any other domain.

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u/lemontoga 3d ago

Luckily Harvard published an updated study 2 months ago so we don't have to rely on such outdated data.

Spoiler alert: they found the exact same thing is still true. All the benefits you gain from having a machine vomit out slop code are lost in the increased burden of reviewing that code.

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u/Redholl 1d ago

This paper has not been confirmed as published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, nor has it undergone any verified independent peer review.

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u/whinis 3d ago

The problem is this same argument is repeated every 6 months whenever a new paper is published "oh ya that model was trash." So either its always been trashed or these studies are showing a common trend.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 3d ago

Subjectively, there was a clear line around 6 months ago where models switched from not worth it to worth it, at least in terms of time spent.

So, yes, all the worst people will make the same exhausting, thoughtless arguments: "It's only gonna get better," "It's inevitable," or even more infuriating, "You just have to prompt better" or "That study you quoted that took a month to do is invalid, because it ran on a month-old model"... and they've been saying the same thing since these things could barely write something that compiled at all. I hate that they've been right, because they could not possibly have known. They were applying this kind of logic the whole time.

But the models are indeed getting better.

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u/whinis 3d ago

Models have constantly been getting better but even current studies, such as harvard have shown that even in coding the overall productivity increase is effectively zero. It might make coding faster but that code is harder to review or modify.

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u/SanityInAnarchy 3d ago

I hate to say it, but: I did just say "there was a clear line around 6 months ago", which would've been the most recent update to that paper. If they come back in 6 months and show the models I use weren't helping, fair enough.

The other complaint is of course about methodology: Measuring productivity through Jira issues closed is better than lines of code, but not by much. A reviewer with a chatbot just found a massive bug in something we built. I know what you're thinking, but it's a massive design bug in a dependency that we adopted two years ago, before we were even allowed to use Copilot. So the bots didn't cause the bug, but they did identify it, and it's too severe to ignore. As a result, those Jira tasks are gonna take a hell of a lot longer to close.

That seems obviously beneficial to me, but the study would measure it as a net decrease in productivity. I closed negative Jiras this week.

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u/whinis 2d ago

You are the first I have talked to, atleast online, willing to check back later rather than just repeat the same "that was old" line. As far are Jira/LOC/ some other measure, this is the problem in all software engineering. Productivity is not super obvious at an individual level or organization level, best you can get in a study is atleast measuring everyone the same way.

In my organization clearing Jira tickets is the main measure but I got reprimanded my first couple of quarters here because I followed the policies exactly of 1 ticket per feature instead of what was actually happening of most engineers making a ticket for about 3-4 hours of work. Principle engineers are expected to clear 100-150 tickets per week with each lower level expecting 33% less than the last. Meanwhile literally nothing gets done because thats the metric and not anything functional. AI didn't change number of tickets cleared here nor did it increase features shipped or really anything, the problems are not at the code level.

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 3d ago

Yep. Compare a model from 6 months ago to the current frontier and claim that there is no way AI makes programming quicker

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u/G-Litch 3d ago

Delivering bugs ✨faster✨

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u/Defiant-Plantain1873 3d ago

Linux kernel uses ai written code.

Clearly its not bad and serves a purpose, just because you want to try and protect your job or hobby that does not at all make these tools ineffective in the slightest

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u/lemontoga 3d ago

How about a study from 2 months ago?

I've been hearing this dumb "You can't use that study because it's X months / years out of date. The models used to suck, but now they're so good. Literally everything's changed in the last 6 months!" repeated over and over again every few months for like 2 years now.

Also the models from 6 months ago aren't even really better by Anthropic's own admissions.

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u/Redholl 1d ago

The paper is not verified. This paper has not been confirmed as published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal, nor has it undergone any verified independent peer review.

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u/coljackson42069 2d ago

training models on copyrighted books is transformative fair use

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u/FyreWulff 2d ago

It's because it's just stitching together code it stole from somewhere else so you're just inheriting everyone's technical debt instantly

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u/turdas 3d ago

AI agent capabilities have come a long way since a year ago.