Technically an LLM is a tool for extracting candidate responses to plain-text requests. Since (textual) programming languages are languages, they can create passable candidate responses to queries about those. Certain LLMs such as Copilot and Claude have had their training focused a bit more towards programming tasks, but saying that LLMs as a class are for coding assistance is a little narrowly stated.

It would maybe be handy to feed the responses from an LLM through a computational reasoning engine to grade a few of them.

We do actually keep cars out of areas with lots of people here. And the media headlines always refer to a "car" driving into people without mentioning the person behind the steering wheel. Whether that's the better than addressing the root issue is another question though.

We also don't allow car use without a license.

In the end what matters if allowing something is a net positive or not. Of course you can have more precise rules than just a blanket ban but when deciding and enforcing those rules is not free that also needs to be considered in the cost benefit analysis. Unless you can propose how projects can allow "good" contributions without spending more time on weeding out bad ones, a blanket ban makes sense.

> The purpose of a tool is important.

> Guns have no other purpose than doing harm.

Objects don't have purposes or intent until people use them, and many objects have multiple reasonable and dual purposes. Objects can be used for net good and net harm. A bow and arrow isn't specifically for harming humans but can be used for such. Chainsaws and meat cleavers too.

What would you like a machine gun-wielding terrorist to be stopped with? A strongly-worded letter?

On the same token of reasonableness and rationality, it's unreasonable to give a toddler a towed howitzer that's ordinarily destined for Big Sandy Shoot.