It wasn't the AI [LWN.net]

It wasn't the AI

Posted Jun 1, 2026 22:18 UTC (Mon) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75)
Parent article: Ombredanne: An AI agent ported our codebase from Python to Rust

The story is interesting, but it ignores the role of human agency. A LLM may have done the leg work, but it's quite unlikely it did all this on its own recognizance. It's far more likely that some human picked the target and at the very least turned the LLM loose on it; they might very well have done quite a bit more to help it with the task. Leaving out that crucial human element is a common flaw in discussions of what's happening with LLMs. For instance, LLMs aren't threatening people's jobs; businesses that would rather pay a LLM company than a human being are threatening their employees' jobs. Every time you read about "AI did this" or "LLMs are doing that", look for the human who's giving the LLM orders. They're the ones we should be focusing on.

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It wasn't the AI

Posted Jun 2, 2026 18:25 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (3 responses)

> Every time you read about "AI did this" or "LLMs are doing that", look for the human who's giving the LLM orders. They're the ones we should be focusing on.

... especially when violating licenses and attributions. While duplicating a tool that checks exactly - the irony is indeed crazy.

It wasn't the AI

Posted Jun 2, 2026 19:09 UTC (Tue) by marcH (subscriber, #57642) [Link] (2 responses)

BTW I really don't understand the (human) purpose here. Is this just some sort of social experiment?

There are many different ways to fork a project. LLMs, AI and language preferences aside, there seems to be no more hostile and generally worse way than this... very puzzling.

There are very many interesting use cases for LLMs, including fast but _private_ prototyping and experimentation, especially for people with limited development experience. But... an "outreach campaign" for a hostile and hopeless fork?!

It's all a bit mysterious though because the blog carefully avoids any reference to the fork, avoiding even its name. I think I found it but I didn't find any trace of any outreach campaign... weird.

(The blog is still a very interesting analysis in any case)

It wasn't the AI

Posted Jun 2, 2026 21:31 UTC (Tue) by rgmoore (✭ supporter ✭, #75) [Link] (1 responses)

It's all a bit mysterious though because the blog carefully avoids any reference to the fork, avoiding even its name.

I think it's an attempt to deny the fork and its human creator any publicity. They're worried that mentioning it by name would get people interested in it and might give the human publicity as someone who's an expert at using LLMs to copy FOSS. That seems like a totally legitimate concern, but it would have been smart to include a sentence or two explaining why they aren't naming and shaming. A simple "Note: we have avoided naming the software or the developer behind it to avoid giving them publicity" would have helped.

It wasn't the AI

Posted Jun 4, 2026 13:57 UTC (Thu) by ballombe (subscriber, #9523) [Link]

I am quite sure to have read an article some month ago about this exact fork extolling the benefit of LLM and the advantage of rust vs python. I will not summary it here. I understand the authors reactions.