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Yet another example of the agile mentality - that one doesn't have to actually understand the problem at hand, or practice any serious engineering discipline when it comes to software.</div>
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Moving fast & breaking things, with no aforethought, is bad enough when practiced by human code monkeys. When we turn automated code monkeys to throw shit against the walls, to see what sticks - with ill-defined directions, and no review - that's the end of
civilization.</div>
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We need to start applying serious subject domain expertise, and serious engineering practice to the development of software - doing the math, serious systems architecture & engineering practice, serious design reviews from the specification stage onwards.</div>
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Otherwise it's game over for our human family enterprise. </div>
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(Then again, if we're going to start releasing autonomous Skynet drones into the world - maybe we WANT to program them with code that doesn't work at all.)</div>
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Miles Fidelman</div>
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<div id="divRplyFwdMsg" dir="ltr"><font face="Calibri, sans-serif" style="font-size:11pt" color="#000000"><b>From:</b> Discuss <discuss-bounces@lists.osgeo.org> on behalf of Even Rouault via Discuss <discuss@lists.osgeo.org><br>
<b>Sent:</b> Saturday, April 11, 2026 9:14 AM<br>
<b>To:</b> OSGeo Discuss list <discuss@lists.osgeo.org><br>
<b>Subject:</b> Re: [OSGeo-Discuss] AI slope reaching our projects</font>
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<div class="PlainText">Hi,<br>
<br>
So 2 months after having written be below message, and GDAL, PROJ, QGIS <br>
having adopted this human-in-the-loop policy, I personally consider it <br>
as mostly a failure (which was a very likely outcome). I've no idea <br>
about how much seriousness contributors using AI tools give in reviewing <br>
their output, but the reality is that even if they are well intended and <br>
super careful and read every line and (believe they) understand what it <br>
does, they just lack the experience to have a critical eye (which is the <br>
reason in the first place why they needed to use it). The asymmetry of <br>
effort between the ease for them to push the PR and the ones bearing on <br>
the reviewer's shoulder to debunk the flaws is unsustainable. Pretty <br>
similar to <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandolini%27s_law</a> . With the
<br>
difference that it is far from being obvious where the "lie" is (which <br>
is expected since those tools are designed at generating credible <br>
output). You've have to be super mindful of the tendency of LLMs to <br>
generate bloat. Unit tests are a striking examples. Before AI, we were <br>
begging our contributors with "please write a couple unit tests, <br>
please". No this is more "please please cut down the tests to the bare <br>
minimum, and remove all those comments that bring nothing but increasing <br>
cognitive burden". Crazy!<br>
<br>
So my mindset would be now more on the side "no AI generated code <br>
allowed", but I don't know how we can realistically enforce that. I bet <br>
a significant proportion of people addicted to those tools will for sure <br>
lie (addiction is the appropriate word), which will make things even <br>
worse if you don't know when you have to turn your <br>
review-with-extreme-scepticism radar on.<br>
<br>
Any feedback from other projects that the ones mentioned here?<br>
<br>
Even<br>
<br>
<br>
Le 05/02/2026 à 18:14, Even Rouault a écrit :<br>
> Hi,<br>
><br>
> At least GDAL, GRASS-GIS and QGIS have seen recently a raise in AI <br>
> driven "contributions". That's really a plague. GRASS-GIS has adopted <br>
> a policy regarding that in <br>
> <a href="https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#ai-use-policy">
https://github.com/OSGeo/grass/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md#ai-use-policy</a> <br>
> . QGIS is about to have one in <br>
> <a href="https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/pull/363">https://github.com/qgis/QGIS-Enhancement-Proposals/pull/363</a>. GDAL will
<br>
> likely do something similar soon.<br>
><br>
> Like there's a Code of conduct that projects can use, maybe OSGeo <br>
> could have a similar thing. Although I suspect people may have <br>
> different sensitivities to the subject.<br>
><br>
> Even<br>
><br>
-- <br>
<a href="http://www.spatialys.com">http://www.spatialys.com</a><br>
My software is free, but my time generally not.<br>
<br>
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