If ChatGPT could change that to something like "disable current limits" or "disable safety checks" or whatever that might be marginally better.
I mean, a human brain is arguably also a purely functional transformation adding zero information.
And yes, technically they could do it in comments, which would allow GPT-3 to process it. Except, I think it's highly unlikely for a coder using ChatGPT to write commit messages for them to actually author useful comments on their own. If they write any at all, they'll probably use ChatGPT (or Copilot) for that too.
Elsewhere in this thread someone was wondering if sending a change diff to a fly-by-night third party SaaS could be leaking company IP. They were thinking too small.
But cynicism aside - giving the model access to all that contextual info would definitely increase the chances it would generate useful commit summaries. It would also increase chances it would generate much more convincing bullshit, full of just the right phrases to confuse your programmers, PMs and architects alike.
ChatGPT can't correctly guess what the author's intent was, because that information is not contained in the code (exception: if the code includes a comment explaining the intent).
Maybe prefixing them all with gpt: would help
I think this is the core of my argument, yeah. If a _reader_ needs better than they can run GPT themselves. But the _writer_ using it is worse than useless, it's actively harmful.
I've experienced messages barely better than this in products that were under no immediate threat, and let me tell you this: having to figure out why some changes were made, three years earlier, in a bunch of badly-described commits whose author already left for another job, with no old documentation hinting at the purpose of the changes - this is one of the few things in this job that make me want to shout someone's ear off.