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.
Excellent
You know, GNOME does some stupid stuff, but I can respect them for this.
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@uncouple9831
That person debugging that stuff, that’s who cares.deleted by creator
GNOME manually reviews every extension, and they understandably don’t want to review AI generated code.
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Jeez. Calm down.
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Yes they actually review the extensions, you’ll find more information on the blogpost from last week.
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@uncouple9831 @imecth Because they care. Quaint old concept, I know…
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in the case of ai generated code, that is almost always the case. People say “but I review all my pet neural network’s code!” but they don’t. If they did, the job would actuallydtake longer. Reading and understanding code takes longer than writing it.
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“why would that be anyone but the original author?”
That is what i was replying to, and I replied to the intended comment
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Yes it would be someone else. If the code looks good then it might last a long time, and it could even be expanded upon. One key point of FOSS is that anyone can change it, and if it’s good, people will.
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@uncouple9831
That would be any person trying to audit that barely functioning pile of poorly structured code someone left behind after finishing their contract or being fired, for example.deleted by creator
you shouldn’t be able to tell if someone used ai to write something. if you can then it is bad code. they’re not talking about getting completion on a fn, they’re talking about letting an agent go and write chunks of the project.
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i’d love to review some of the code that you personally wrote.
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did you read their statement? they do.
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read their text again, the problem is that people submit code that they don’t understand. and this will grow the more people decide to stay stupid / employ LLMs.
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I applaud the move, but man, that’s gonna be a lot of work on their end.
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
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?
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.
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.
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)?
The difference is people aren’t being responsible with AI
You’re projecting competence onto others. You speak like you’re using AI responsibly
I use AI when it makes things easier. All the time. I bet you do too. Many people are using AI without a steady hand, without the intellectual strength to use it properly in a controlled manner
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We do this all the time. I’m certified for a whole bunch of heavy machinery, if I were worse people would’ve died
And even then, I’ve nearly killed someone. I haven’t, but on a couple occasions I’ve come way too close
It’s good that I went through training. Sometimes, it’s better to restrict who is able to use powerful tools
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People have already died to AI. It’s cute when the AI tells you to put glue on your pizza or asks you to leave your wife, it’s not so cute when architects and doctors use it
Bad information can be deadly. And if you rely too hard on AI, your cognitive abilities drop. It’s a simple mental shortcut that works on almost everything
It’s only been like 18 months, and already it’s become very apparent a lot of people can’t be trusted with it. Blame and punish those people all you want, it’ll just keep happening. Humans love their mental shortcuts
Realistically, I think we should just make it illegal to have customer facing LLMs as a service. You want an AI? Set it up yourself. It’s not hard, but realizing it’s just a file on your computer would do a lot to demystify it
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Well I was just arguing that people generally are using AI irresponsibly, but if you want to get specific…
You say ban the users, but realistically how are they determining that? The only way to reliably check if something is AI is human intuition. There’s no tool to do that, it’s a real problem
So effectively, they made it an offense to submit AI slop. Because if you just use AI properly as a resource, no one would be able to tell
So what are you upset about?
They did basically what you suggested, they just did it by making a rule so that they can have a reason to reject slop without spending too much time justifying the rejection
They should state a justification. Not merely what they are looking for to identify AI generated code.
The justification could be the author is unlikely to be capable of maintenance. In which case the extension is just going to inconvenience/burden onto others.
So far their is no justification stated besides, da fuk and yuk.
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A saner organization would also hit up submitters for a reviewer’s fee. This would reduce AI spam. Barriers to entry matter.
A reviewers fee is equivalent to Canonical offering customer support contracts. Obviously a person that needs to lean on AI as a crutch, is just screaming out for reviewers to act as advisers. The reviewer just wielding the giant DENIED stamp is fun, but doesn’t address the issue of noobs implicitly asking to work with a consultant.
gnome reviewers obviously never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Have you read the first paragraph if the lidnked articel? It quotes the criteria right there: "Extensions must not be AI-generated
While it is not prohibited to use AI as a learning aid or a development tool (i.e. code completions), extension developers should be able to justify and explain the code they submit, within reason.
Submissions with large amounts of unnecessary code, inconsistent code style, imaginary API usage, comments serving as LLM prompts, or other indications of AI-generated output will be rejected."
Maybe instead of commenting under every comment that lines this change read the articlw first? Ai is fine if your code is fine and you uderstand it. If the reviewer has to argue with a llm because the submitter just pasts the text into his llm and then posts the output of said llm back to the reviwer it is a huge waste of time. Thiss doesnt happen if the person submitting the code understands it and made shure that the code is fine.
Everyone commenting have read and understood the article. Perhaps the nuance of the conversation is just going over your head. Your commentary is your personal opinion, which is outside of the source material. What you copy+pasted is exactly what we’ve commented on.
The article never said “reviewing Gnome extensions, where LLM was used, is a huge waste of time”. You are adding to what’s said. The adults are not pulling from outside the article.
We are stating what the article lacks. We are not hallucinating. So if we are not hallucinating then you must not be following. Reread it a few times until you get it.
Maybe read the original blog post from the gnome dev then? The post the article references… it says right there why the ai code is a problem, it has to much unnessecery code in it and reviewing that takes time. The author also says the submitted ai code doesnt adhere to good practices.
The answer you seek is literally the post.
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.
