(This post was written quickly and not much effort was put into it, I kind of just wrote without much structure. I also don’t expect anyone to actually read this)

It’s not your code

I just don’t like it, but I don’t necessarily hate it. I’m gonna jump to my point, the reason why I am making this post. Lots of people believe that if you give an AI instructions, and have it program something, it makes you the one who wrote that code… No, just no, that’s wrong. The AI is the one who wrote that code, not you. If anyone submits any code to me saying that they wrote it when really an AI was the one that wrote it, I’ll ban you from my repos.

I am not going to even get into the copyright issues that exist.

I don’t even think I’m going to allow AI in my repos unless it’s really really small, like a small function. I DO think using AI as a little assistant is okay, if you ask it how to do something that’s fine, but having it actually write the code for you, and then claiming it as your own, is just wrong.

Maybe I should add a CONTRIBUTING.md file to any public repo I expect people to maybe contribute to, saying that AI generated code is not prohibited, but I don’t really have people contributing to my projects

Despite all this, in a VM, I have actually messed around with it, and it’s interesting, but I’d never use it for any of my actual projects.

You’re not a real programmer if a decent chunk of “your” code is written by AI.

I also hate “web dev”, so maybe I should write a post about that too.

PS

MCP will always be Mod Coder Pack in my heart (Mod Coder Pack is stuff for Minecraft modding)

Emerging Thoughts

This part of the post is for when I have new thoughts on this topic, I’ll just put them here. This is not super organized

I just thought about this, and I’m not sure it’s an entirely fair comparison, but I wanna say it anyways since I think it’s interesting. It’s like if you are an artist, and you have AI generate parts of your artwork, like, what. I don’t want AI to generate parts of my art, I want to make the art myself, that’s kind of what AI programming is like. (Again, I don’t think it’s an entirely 1 to 1 comparison, it was just an interesting thought)

I don’t think of using an AI while programming as a tool, it’s like… too powerful I guess, it just doesn’t feel like a tool. It feels like you are outsourcing the work to someone else, then possibly claiming that you did that work. For fun, I was actually talking to an AI about this, and the AI said AI could be like a smoother brush. I disagree with that

Part of programming is solving problems yourself, not outsourcing it to someone else/an AI If you’re stuck on something, you can look up solutions, and you can add them to your code, but you can’t claim that you wrote that code, because you didn’t (unless you were given a formula, then you implemented that formula, then I’d say you wrote that code, but did not come up with the formula). Honestly, I don’t see anything wrong with doing this sometimes, just make sure to leave a comment leading to the source

I think that using it for small boilerplate is okay, but at that point you really don’t need it at all. By small boilerplate, I mean if I type a line about width, the AI will have a suggestion for the next line and it would be about height. Stuff like that is okay, and I actually used to use AI for that. Also, if you use it to generate a small function that does something small that you do not understand, I think that might be okay. It’s ironic that I love programming yet I don’t like Math that much, I have previously used AI to generate a small function that multiples some matrices for an OpenGL program because I did not understand the math. Using it for that purpose, is okay. Maybe you should at least try to understand what the code is doing, try to understand that math. I think now I would actually just look up the formula and do it myself. Oh btw, I haven’t even had one of those AI assistant plugins installed for like half a year, maybe more.

It’s kind of like if you commission some artwork, and then say that you made it. Even if you influenced the art, and told the artist what you want, you still did not make it, the artist did. Hmmm, I’m thinking, maybe in that case you could say the person who commissioned the art did help in the creation of it, because it was originally their idea, so they had some creative influence in it. Hmmm, so maybe, if you prompt an AI to generate some code, there is a really small piece of that you could say you own, but I think that would depend on what you exactly told the AI. If you gave it hyperspecific instructions, then maybe you have a bigger ownership of that code, but if you just told it to write some code without telling it how, then that’s a really small piece of ownership. This is changing the way I think about it just a little bit. Hmm, if you commission an artist to “Make something really cool”, then I feel like you don’t have any ownership of the final piece. If you told the artist to make something then were hyperspecific in the details, then I’d say you own a decent part of it. Hmmm, interesting. I’m not entirely sure how I’m feeling now

If you tell the AI to make something, “Make a music player”, then the AI generates the entire project. I do not think you can give yourself credit for making that, you’re just straight-up a liar if you do. I sometimes see people like “I just made tool using AI tool” and all they did was ask it to “Make tool using blah blah blah”, then claim it as their own, I’m just like WTF!? Stop lying, you did NOT make that, the AI did, are you serious, you must be joking, that makes NO sense. Ugh