Comment by Brian_K_White
4 days ago
I'd rather read bad poetry written by a person than anything generated by a machine.
Even if an LLM generates "good" poetry, it did not, it mashed up elements of good poetry previously written by people, but stripped of all attribution, and stripped of all intents and insights of those original authors.
Since software has a function besides pure art, it's tempting to think of it as actually nothing but function, and so it doesn't matter how a functional thing comes about, merely that it functions. But I say there is more to software than that, and I'd rather not spend my own time and attention on things that no one else spent any of their own time and attention on.
Maybe codeberg is reacting too crudely, so maybe I don't defend them or this action fully in it's current form, but there is nothing ridiculous about the concept of a human-only filter being a seal of quality. The quality isn't the code all works the best, the quality is it's all human.
I struggle with that argument. I feel the same way but remind myself that I find art stupid (the blue line on a blank canvas worth x millions because of who made it and what their story is or something) and this seems like the same thing. I shouldn't care who wrote something if it's of the same quality. Also part of hacker ethos: we judge people based on their hacking, not diplomas or skin color or other aspects (in this case: type of neural network)
There's lots of people that appreciate art so I'm not saying this isn't a valid argument for wanting code from a real craftsperson. Just to me personally it feels like it shouldn't be, yet I feel similarly about it