Tom,
I've been pondering that very same question. And--for myself--I'll just declare for every MR/Issue I'm going to open in the future that
LLMs may have been used in the creation. This gives me the peace of mind that I'm not lying to anyone, while also allowing me to
not have to spend excessive mental capacity and bookkeeping to ensure that I did not intentionally or unintentionally use any LLM (Copilot, ...)
during the creation of any such contribution. I simply can not guarantee that over a span of a week or more, I didn't somehow end
up using LLM tech these days.
I accept that the net result will be that I'll be viewed as a second class contributor; however I will not compromise my integrity by
accidentally lying about LLM usage. I do not want to open myself up to the debate of weather or not LLMs have been used during
the creation. There is no way I could even exhaustively prove that I haven't and the policy gives human-written work a
presumptive normative advantage.
The policy in essence reads to me like this:
1. LLMs are ubiquitous.
2. LLM usage is part of life.
3. We prefer human written code over AI assisted code.
4. AI assistance must be declared.
This leads (with the other notes from the document to the following understanding--AI was used to phrase this hopefully in a way
that's easier to understand and get my argument across):
P4 calls disclosure “merely an acknowledgement, not a weakness.” But elsewhere the policy says that:-
human-written code and documentation are strongly preferred;
-
reviewers may adjust their “feedback and discourse” after disclosure;
-
AI-generated submissions are associated with inadequate understanding, reviewer burden, technical debt, de-skilling, and weakened human relationships.
Consequently, disclosure cannot realistically be completely neutral. It communicates membership in a category that the policy has already characterised as riskier and less desirable. A contributor who over-discloses borderline autocomplete use may therefore suffer a reputational or review disadvantage
The policy states "I'm guessing that this MR was authored at least partly by an LLM", which puts suspicion on the faithful declaration of AI use by the author. The policy does not say
A contributor’s good-faith declaration concerning LLM use should be accepted unless there is specific evidence that it is false. Stylistic impressions or unverified AI-detection results are not sufficient grounds for adverse treatment.
Consequently, because I can't prove to myself that I didn't use any LLM assistance, I will rather disclose that LLMs may have been used, to be on the safe side (“err on the side” of declaration). Subsequently I accept that I'll be viewed as a second class contributor. I guess that is why I find this policy (and discussion around) in part hostile to contributions. In an age of LLM proliferation, I think this will not attract fewer contributors.
There is a book that has had a very lasting effect on me:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Make_Me_Think.
Best,
Moritz