Re: [MAINTAINERS SUMMIT] Annotating patches containing AI-assisted code

[Mauro Carvalho Chehab <mchehab+huawei@kernel.org>]

Em Mon, 11 Aug 2025 15:51:48 -0700
"Paul E. McKenney" <paulmck@kernel.org> escreveu:

> On Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 03:11:47PM -0700, Luis Chamberlain wrote:
> > On Mon, Aug 11, 2025 at 02:46:11PM -0700, Paul E. McKenney wrote:  
> > > depending on how that AI was
> > > trained, those using that AI's output might have some difficulty meeting
> > > the requirements of the second portion of clause (a) of Developer's
> > > Certificate of Origin (DCO) 1.1: "I have the right to submit it under
> > > the open source license indicated in the file".  
> > 
> > If the argument is that cetain LLM generated code cannot be used for code under
> > the DCO, then:
> > 
> > a) isn't this debatable? Do we want to itemize a safe list for AI models
> >    which we think are safe to adopt for AI generated code?  
> 
> For my own work, I will continue to avoid use of AI-generated artifacts
> for open-source software projects unless and until some of the more
> consequential "debates" are resolved favorably.
> 
> > b) seems kind of too late  
> 
> Why?
> 
> > c) If something like the Generated-by tag is used, and we trust it, then
> >    if we do want to side against merging AI generated code, that's perhaps our
> >    only chance at blocking that type of code. Its however not bullet proof.  
> 
> Nothing is bullet proof.  ;-)

Let's face reality: before AI generation, more than one time I
received completely identical patches from different developers
with exactly the same content. Sometimes, even the descriptions
were similar. I got one or twice the same description even.

Granted, those are bug fixes for obvious fixes (usually one liners), but
the point is: there are certain software patterns that are so common 
that there are lots of developers around the globe whose are familiar
with. This is not different from a AI: if one asks it to write a DPS code 
in some language (C, C++, Python, you name it), I bet the code will be
at least 90% similar to any other code you or anyone else would write.

The rationale is that we're all trained directly or indirectly
(including AI) with the same textbook algorithms or from someone
that used such textbooks.

I can't see AI making it any better or worse from what we already
have.

Thanks,
Mauro