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Comment by nasso_dev | Hacker News Reader

imho disclosing use of LLMs is just being transparent and honest. is it that hard? deliberately hiding this should absolutely get you in trouble, because trust is the most important thing to have in open-source

as you probably have seen in TFA, the policy does not ban LLM usage. its just asking for disclosure so that maintainers know how much effort was put in a PR

and, please, open-source maintainers owe us nothing. refusing to merge a patch is not the same as cops searching your car. this is merely maintainers trying to evaluate how they should spend their precious time

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> disclosing use of LLMs is just being transparent and honest. is it that hard?

Your assertion here is irrelevant to the poster's point.

You're focused on the "happy path:" everyone has perfect information and judges correctly. If the submitter used AI, they say so and the commenters on the PR agree. If the submitter did not use AI, they don't say they used AI, and the commenters on the PR agree. This is the diagonal elements on the "used AI" confusion matrix.

The commenter is pointing out that information and judgment are not perfect and they're concerned about the off-diagonal elements of the confusion matrix. Especially the "Didn't use AI, but some commenters believe that they did" element.

I agree with you that trust and transparency are important, but please understand that disclosure is not a simple matter.

There is stigma surrounding LLM usage. There are consequences. Disclosing can lead to harassment and direct harm to one's reputation. I've been called "slop fetishist" and "clanker lover" before.

yes. there's a reason there's exactly two things in the policy that are marked as moderation consequences and they're directly next to each other. "no harassment" doesn't work if people are paranoid that any PR could be LLM slop, and "disclosure is required" doesn't work if people are worried about harassment. you need both, and you need them to go into force at the same time.

Completely agree. Making harassment of LLM users explicitly against the rules was very welcome. It's something I haven't seen in other LLM policies. It instantly gained my respect.

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