The purpose of AI in most of this context is **not** about improving productivity!! It's about taking away tech-worker labor power. Cory Doctorow explains it all very clearly: [1]https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-cen taurs There will be a day when AI is actually productively helpful, but that's not today for most things. Today, it is a cudgel for bosses to use to take away power from workers, even if the results for productivity are worse.
On 7/11/25 8:31, Albert Lee via libreplanet-discuss wrote: Here's the conclusion of a well-timed study on the impact of using AI code gen tools in free software projects: [1][2]https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-st udy/ "When developers are allowed to use AI tools, they take 19% longer to complete issues—a significant slowdown that goes against developer beliefs and expert forecasts. This gap between perception and reality is striking: developers expected AI to speed them up by 24%, and even after experiencing the slowdown, they still believed AI had sped them up by 20%." -Albert On Thu, Jul 10, 2025, 14:38 Lars Noodén via libreplanet-discuss [3]<[2]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org> wrote: On 7/7/25 04:17, Akira Urushibata wrote: > Maybe I'm not looking hard enough. If anybody can point out to good > examples of AI usage in free software development, I'd like to know. Hi, Akira, Yes, LLM-based output has been affecting free software development for a while. Daniel Stenberg of cURL fame has written about its impact several times with clear examples. Here are two posts about it: "The I in LLM stands for intelligence" [3][4]https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/02/the-i-in-llm-stands-for-in telligence/ "Curl takes action against time-wasting AI bug reports" [4][5]https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/curl_ai_bug_reports/ As result, the cURL project has taken to banning accounts which get caught submitting AI slop in the place of bug reports: "Contribute to the curl project!" [5][6]https://curl.se/dev/contribute.html#on-ai-use-in-curl Now if you are looking for /positive/ examples the effects of AI slop in free software projects, I think your hunch is correct and there may not be any. Going back to your question about the beast in Redmond, which although proprietary, it shows that LLMs get in the way of development, at best. One can conclude that because competition there between departments and even employees is so cutthroat that if there had been even the slightest advantage from using LLM slop oneself, then it would be found all over the place. However, because LLM slop output does not help, you now see the creation of mandates there for the remaining employees to force them to try to (or pretend to) use LLM slop: "Microsoft Makes AI Usage Mandatory for Employees as Performance Reviews Face Overhaul" [6][7]https://medium.com/@hamza_83953/microsoft-makes-ai-usage-mandator y-for-employees-as-performance-reviews-face-overhaul-8f8cc020f637 I've only ever done limited scripting myself, albeit over a longer period. Over that time I gather that while typing in working code is a challenge, understanding and defining the problem(s) to be solved and then breaking them down into small units is much harder and so is documenting the code as you go along. Those two aspects are nothing which plausible sentence generators and plagiarism engines can help with, even if their attribution-stripped output does seem to compile. Currently LLM coding is a scam which is being perpetrated because so few understand ICT and, because of the influence of Redmond against education, that number is declining. Software freedom has been slowing that decline but Software Freedom promoting groups need to team up with educational projects and eject the productivity killing and knowledge killing microsofters or at least keep them at bay so as to turn that around and /increase/ the numbers of those who understand and can use ICT. /Lars cc: Akira Because of the infamous moderation latency on this list. _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [[8]7]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org [8][9]https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discus s References 1. [10]https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-stud y/ 2. [11]mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 3. [12]https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/02/the-i-in-llm-stands-for-intelli gence/ 4. [13]https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/curl_ai_bug_reports/ 5. [14]https://curl.se/dev/contribute.html#on-ai-use-in-curl 6. [15]https://medium.com/@hamza_83953/microsoft-makes-ai-usage-mandatory-for -employees-as-performance-reviews-face-overhaul-8f8cc020f637 7. [16]mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 8. [17]https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss _______________________________________________ libreplanet-discuss mailing list [18]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org [19]https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss References 1. https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/23/maximal-plausibility/#reverse-centaurs 2. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-st 3. mailto:[2]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 4. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/02/the-i-in-llm-stands-for-in 5. https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/curl_ai_bug_reports/ 6. https://curl.se/dev/contribute.html#on-ai-use-in-curl 7. https://medium.com/@hamza_83953/microsoft-makes-ai-usage-mandator 8. mailto:7]libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 9. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discus 10. https://metr.org/blog/2025-07-10-early-2025-ai-experienced-os-dev-study/ 11. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 12. https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2024/01/02/the-i-in-llm-stands-for-intelligence/ 13. https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/07/curl_ai_bug_reports/ 14. https://curl.se/dev/contribute.html#on-ai-use-in-curl 15. https://medium.com/@hamza_83953/microsoft-makes-ai-usage-mandatory-for-employees-as-performance-reviews-face-overhaul-8f8cc020f637 16. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 17. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss 18. mailto:libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org 19. https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
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