The AI hype-cyclone is bad, but so is the anti-AI witch hunt. Commits co-authored by Claude do not mean that a project has "abandoned engineering as a serious endeavor"
Would we say that accepting contributions from new developers means we've "abandoned engineering as a serious endeavor"? No.
Claude can write wrong code. New contributors can write wrong code. What matters is what you do with that code after it's been written.
@nedbat Why accept the AI companies' framing of an LLM as a person? What's next, vim as a co-author? coverage as a co-author?
Also, why use the phrase "witch hunt" for something which is very much not a witch hunt? There are all kinds of reasons to hate on LLMs.
@neoluddite In particular, I was disappointed that someone decided that the entire CPython project had "abandoned engineering as a serious endeavor." Yes, AI has problems, but "Claude" in a commit message doesn't mean the whole project is out the window.
I don't consider AI a person, and I'm fine with leaving off the "Co-author" line.
@nedbat Given all of the other commits that I've seen where Claude and other LLMs (and the people running them) have no idea what they're doing, it's a pretty fair accusation.
Maybe Python has strong engineering in place, but given ALL of the issues with LLMs, the onus is very much on the people using it to demonstrate that it's a) done well, engineering-wise and b) has some major benefit that's unachievable in any other reasonable way.
Ned Batchelder
neoluddite