The GNOME.org Extensions hosting for GNOME Shell extensions will no longer accept new contributions with AI-generated code. A new rule has been added to their review guidelines to forbid AI-generated code.
Due to the growing number of GNOME Shell extensions looking to appear on extensions.gnome.org that were generated using AI, it’s now prohibited. The new rule in their guidelines note that AI-generated code will be explicitly rejected
extension developers should be able to justify and explain the code they submit, within reason
I think this is the meat of how the policy will work. People can use AI or not. Nobody is going to know. But if someone slops in a giant submission and can’t explain why any of the code exists, it needs to go in the garbage.
Too many people think because something finally “works”, it’s good. Once your AI has written code that seems to work, that’s supposed to be when the human starts their work. You’re not done. You’re not almost done. You have a working prototype that you now need to turn into something of value.
Too many people think because something finally “works”, it’s good. Once your AI has written code that seems to work, that’s supposed to be when the human starts their work.
Holy shit, preach!
Once you give a shit ton of prompts and the feature finally starts working, the code is most likely complete ass, probably filled with a ton of useless leftovers from previous iterations, redundant and unoptimized code. That’s when you start reading/understanding the code and polishing it, not when you ship it lol
Just the fact that people are actually trying to regulate it instead of “too nuanced, I will fix it tomorrow” makes me haply.
But they are also doing it pretty reasonably too. I like this.
You used to be able to tell an image was photoshopped because of the pixels. Now with code you can tell it was written with AI because of the comments.
and from seeing quite a few slops in my time
Emojis in comments, filename as a comment in the first line, and so on
I’ve been in the habit of putting the filename as first comment in most of my scripts forever. I don’t know when or why I started but please don’t make me change!
You’re absolutely right — we shouldn’t have to change our style just because a machine copies it.
it’s how example code is often written when it’s i. a book or a webpage… there’s not really a good reason to do it in a real file because it’s in the filename.
but if it helps you organize it doesn’t hurt anything.Put a random fuck in the comment to differentiate yourself
// not AI slop. This is pure human slop! // I appreciate pull requests from people smarter than me.
I add a comment to he first line of unsaved files because that’s what Code displays for the tab name and it either helps or confuses me about what is in the tab.
Isn’t fine name in the comment in the first line default behavior for multiple IDE/boilerplate generations?
They werent hiding it, they started with vibe
# Optional but […]
edit to explain my very vague comment: ChatGPT loves to offer code with some lines commented as “Optional [… explanation]”. You can easily tell AI code when the monologuing comments are left in
This is one of the things that people who use AI to vibe code don’t get. Sure your AI genned code ends up working but when you actually look at the code it’s sloppy as all fuck, with a lot of unnecessary junk in it. And if you ever have to fix it, good fucking luck finding what’s actually going on. Since you didn’t write it there’s no way for you to know exactly what it is that’s actually fucking up.
Really you end up being no better than some homebody who copy-pasted some code they found on the internet and plugged it into their shit with no idea of how any of it actually works.
You know, GNOME does some stupid stuff, but I can respect them for this.
Excellent
How is AI-generated content detected and what is the process for disputing such claims?
Just an example:
I’m a programming student. In one of my classes we had a simple assignment. Write a simple script to calculate factorials. The purpose of this assignment was to teach recursion. Should be doable in 4-5 lines max, probably less. My coed decided to vibe code his assignment and ended up with a 55 line script. It worked, but it was literally %1100 of the length it needed to be with lots of dead functions and ‘None->None(None)’ style explicit typing where it just simply wasn’t needed.
The code was hilariously obviously AI code.
Edit: I had like 3/4 typos here
Not all AI code is so obvious though. Especially if you give it detailed instructions on what to do exactly. It could be very hard to tell in some cases
if it’s not clear if it’s ai, it’s not the code this policy was targeting. this is so they don’t have to waste time justifying removing the true ai slop.
if the code looks bad enough to be indistinguishable from ai slop, I don’t think it matters that it was handwritten or not.
I guess the practical idea is that if your AI generated code is so good and you’ve reviewed it so well that it fools the reviewer, the rule did it’s job and then it doesn’t matter.
But most of the time the AI code jumps out immediately to any experienced reviewer, and usually for bad reasons.
So then it’s not really a blanket “no-AI” rule if it can’t be enforceable if it’s good enough? I suppose the rule should have been “no obviously bad AI” or some other equally subjective thing?
wow. that dude is a piece of work. made the mistake of clicking one of the links to his blog, and wow. there’s a stunning lack of knowledge or self respect there
It’s not hard, just use your eyes or an AI-detector
ai detectors are not good. may as well ask your magic 8 ball
Which is how the code was generated in the first place.
I applaud the move, but man, that’s gonna be a lot of work on their end.
Good.
I’m mostly switched off SAMMI because their current head dev is all in on AI bullshit. Got maybe one thing left to move to streamerbot and I’m clear there. My two regular viewers wont notice at all but I’ll feel better about it.
So what does this mean? Bc like (at least with my boss) whenever I submit ai generated code at work I still have to have a deep and comprehensive understanding of the changes that I made, and I have to be right (meaning I have to be right about what I say bc I cannot say the AI solved the problem). What’s the difference between that and me writing the code myself (+googling and stack overflow)?
What’s the difference? Jesus, we have seen the difference in the news for the past year. You know the difference. Don’t play dumb now.
We still talking about extensions, right? Those things in gnome, that shows weather or time in different time zone?
Cause if yes, your response is kinda weird. Oh no, my weather applet is created using AI! Everything will fall apart! Jesus Christ, we need to burn author for that!
