Hi, To reduce the heat on this issue I have:
a) Deleted my comment on the PR, and my reference to that comment. b) Reposted as a Gist so people reading this thread can see what the discussion was about : https://gist.github.com/matthew-brett/a9b43c7266e0fb4f773677ca838fa920 Further replies inline: On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 2:36 AM Robert Kern via NumPy-Discussion <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Thu, Feb 19, 2026 at 6:29 PM Matthew Brett <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> Hi, >> >> Sorry - top posting - but: >> >> I delayed my reply because your accusation of bad faith seemed so >> obviously unreasonable, that I had imagined someone might intervene on >> my behalf, but it seems not. >> >> As I understand it, you're saying that my - rather silly - master plan >> was to post an AI-generated response that was so obviously wrong that >> it would persuade everyone that AI was bad. And to add to my >> incompetence, I sent a link to another conversation I'd had with the >> AI, where it did better, undermining my own case. > > > No, I don't suspect that you have any master plan to convince anyone by this > example alone. You wrote before that "Rather, it increasingly seems like you are strawmanning a particularly bad use of LLMs in order to make a point that LLMs are bad." as the explanation for why you now suspect I was acting in bad faith. I presume from the "this example alone" that you still think I have such a program. As I said before - that's a very silly program. What's the idea here - that I try and persuade my competent and intelligent colleagues of such a ridiculous binary by sneaking in bad examples, when of course y'all have seen many such examples yourselves? It's the price of AI admission. As Matthew Rocklin put it, in his very useful article advocating AI for code generation: "LLMs generate a lot of junk" : https://matthewrocklin.com/ai-zealotry/#why-ai . Yet it is clear to me they will also offer benefit, if used with care. >> I think you're also somehow saying if I had not posted the AI response >> on the issue, but in a Gist, then everything would have been fine, and >> no bad faith need be assumed. > > > Yes. Precisely, it's the doubling and tripling down. If you had deleted the > PR response with an apology, we'd have gone back to productively critiquing > and possibly improving your technique. It's the fact that you took it live on > our project, knowing that it was Not Even Wrong, and not acknowledging it > when that action was criticized. But why oh why would you pitch in with this fierce and insulting diagnosis of my motivation, and demand an immediate apology, rather than saying - "OK - I get the point you're trying to make - but it's not well put and I think you made it in the wrong place, let's move it elsewhere?" Don't you have some responsibility for keeping the conversation calm and civil? I mean - to the project if not to me. I think you agree that copyright is an important and difficult subject that needs careful reflection - we're not going to get there with this level of distrust. Cheers, Matthew _______________________________________________ NumPy-Discussion mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] https://mail.python.org/mailman3//lists/numpy-discussion.python.org Member address: [email protected]
