It sure is interesting watching this space evolve.
I wanted to share a related recent experience of mine that gives me both
concern and hope, and has led me to a further recommendation for
contributors. First, please review this tiny PR in the repo for the
fineract.apache.org website:
https://github.com/apache/fineract-site/pull/43
There's more conversation than code change in that PR, so it's a simple
one to characterize as some form of incompetence, be it human or AI. The
initial description is mostly incorrect: The font file is found (using
the provided grep test!), and an .xcf source file is deleted that is
useful for future edits to the derived .png file. The responses from
@Nitinkamlesh mostly didn't make sense, and they dropped comms
altogether when I asked direct questions about AI.
I'm concerned that this was done without transparency. Had they opened
with "I'm an AI, here's how/why I'm doing this, here's how to work with
the human operator" it would have been much easier and faster to
resolve, and would have engendered rather than destroyed trust.
The part that gives me hope is that I didn't use any new/fancy AI
detector tool and I didn't need to. I think we can double down on
fundamentals to immunize ourselves to future malicious or incompetent
behavior.
To my previous suggestions in Re: Ai assisted Dev on Apache Fineract
<https://lists.apache.org/thread/q1fnzbodv5rbxjogmnxktpwvbb4qjp54>, I'd
add as a general recommendation/reminder to all contributors: *Be
transparent*. Share your env/tooling/experiences. Ask for help as you
scour docs, code, PRs, issues, check with actual users, chat, email,
write spikes, run builds/tests, write new tests, and all that with and
without AI. This is foundational computer science and FOSS community
competence we should all seek to continually improve at.
