There's a few major flaws or logical fallacies or whatnot in your comment:

1. "everybody all the time in favor of AI" - this is not true (objectively)

2. "This is objectively a good change because it will improve the quality of the code in the long term." - this cannot be considered "objectively" a good change because quality is subjective. Second, it makes the assumption that human written code is always (objectively) better than LLM generated, which is also not true.

But this is a software engineering project - the code is only part of the whole project / product, and the (subjective) quality of the code is only part of that. LLMs could write perfect code by whatever quality metrics they use, but if a reviewer is overwhelmed by a morbillion other perfect code contributions from LLMs it's moot.

> Why is everybody all the time in favour of AI on HN?

It is useful?, it works most of the time?

> This is objectively a good change because it will improve the quality of the code in the long term.

It depends?, sure, banning hit-and-run massive AI generated PRs will help.

These were problems before AI too, people just want to get their name on things without putting in effort.

This also bans possibly high quality PRs that fix things or add something new.

Either way, we'll see, anyone can still fork and if it's a better project then that will win over

Are you asking why most people from Big Tech, very likely working on AI-adjacent products, have a very strong pro-AI bias?

Calling your own opinion objective is not a good practice. This is very much something you can have different opinions on.

AI assistance doesn't necessarily imply lower code quality. It can help with improving it in a lot of ways. Full vibe-coding without careful review is what results in low quality code. I think a lot of projects are having trouble getting to the sweet spot, though: if they allow LLM-assisted contributions then no matter how much they write to try make sure the result is high quality they're going to be inundated with far more low-quality contributions and have to work harder to filter through and reject them than if they just have a blanket ban which then makes it a lot easier to reject everything. The linked discussion is specifically with a view that not all LLM assisted contributions are bad but that they need to stem the flow for now and figure out how to open up afterwards.

Will it? Plenty of open source projects have bugs unfixed for decades because it's too tedious to fix by hand and would take five minutes with AI these days. I've also found that good LLMs can be more diligent in updating comments, tests, etc.

>it will improve the quality of the code

That does not mean the product becomes more useful. I could rewrite Windows 1-to-1 with better code quality and no one would care because it still provides the exact same features. Unless "better code" means "better features", better code is useless.

> This is objectively a good change because it will improve the quality of the code in the long term.

Can you explain why you think that?

QGIS is written in C++. Does that affect your answer to this question at all?

Because this is a startup/tech community and people generally look forward to exploring new ideas and tech?

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First, just check out the comments on any "I'm tired of reading slop" submission to refute your first point, the circle jerk is real.

Second, while I sympathize with not wanting to be inundated with low effort PRs, putting a ban on AI assisted contributions in response is myopic virtue signalling.

I'm in favor of AI, but if I was a maintainer for an open source repo, I would also favor banning AI contributions. At least for the wild, maybe people who have built a reputation in the community could stay. I think AI can write quality code. What I doubt is if the average contribution will involve quality code or even human input.

For me, it is the way AI has kept suggestions to either open issues with maintainers or make PRs to fix an "issue" it found. I know it hasn't researched the issue in depth enough to be talking with the confidence it has, and I know I am in no position to be bothering someone else unless I want to spend considerable time investing to make sure the issue is exactly what the AI is claiming, it isn't a known issue, and it is justified to bother the maintainer with it. But there are far too many who will see that option and just tell the AI to do it.

It isn't that I'm against AI. It is that opening a PR or filing an issue use to have significant enough gatekeeping that most low effort low quality work simply wouldn't pass it, but that has now changed. So a new gate is needed to ensure those who aren't willing to put their own time into the work before asking for the time of others, and banning AI is one of the better options I've seen.

This also doesn't even end AI interacting with the project, just changes it. If you have some unique use case that AI finds, you can download it locally, have the AI make the change just for you, and have AI keep updating when necessary. Each user gets the customization they want while maintainers are protected from low effort low quality spam.

In favor? There's a whole spectrum between "complete ban" and "slop all the way", IMO.

Dude maybe if it was ChatGPT 2.0.. AI has come a long way.

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