Re: [PATCH v2 0/3] docs: define policy forbidding use of "AI" / LLM code generators

[Peter Maydell <peter.maydell@linaro.org>]

On Thu, 16 May 2024 at 18:20, Michael S. Tsirkin <mst@redhat.com> wrote:
>
> On Thu, May 16, 2024 at 05:22:27PM +0100, Daniel P. Berrangé wrote:
> > AFAICT at its current state of (im)maturity the question of licensing
> > of AI code generator output does not have a broadly accepted / settled
> > legal position. This is an inherant bias/self-interest from the vendors
> > promoting their usage, who tend to minimize/dismiss the legal questions.
> > >From my POV, this puts such tools in a position of elevated legal risk.
> >
> > Given the fuzziness over the legal position of generated code from
> > such tools, I don't consider it credible (today) for a contributor
> > to assert compliance with the DCO terms (b) or (c) (which is a stated
> > pre-requisite for QEMU accepting patches) when a patch includes (or is
> > derived from) AI generated code.
> >
> > By implication, I think that QEMU must (for now) explicitly decline
> > to (knowingly) accept AI generated code.
> >
> > Perhaps a few years down the line the legal uncertainty will have
> > reduced and we can re-evaluate this policy.

> At this junction, the code generated by these tools is of such
> quality that I really won't expect it to pass even cursory code
> review.

I disagree, I think that in at least some cases they can
produce code that would pass our quality bar, especially with
human supervision and editing after the fact. If the problem
was merely "LLMs tend to produce lousy output" then we wouldn't
need to write anything new -- we already have a process for
dealing with bad patches, which is to say we do code review and
suggest changes or simply reject the patches. What we *don't* have
any process to handle is the legal uncertainties that Dan outlines
above.

-- PMM