Balanced [LWN.net]

Balanced

Posted Aug 6, 2026 11:26 UTC (Thu) by kleptog (subscriber, #1183)
In reply to: Balanced by mb
Parent article: Nelson: rust-lang/rust is adopting an LLM policy

>Yeah, well. I think the idea is different from that. I also typically slowly go through generated code and make minor adjustments here and there manually. What happens is that by doing that I frequently find bigger mistakes that actually matter. Cool down, take a step back, take your time, do seemingly nonproductive things like typing and minor changes. That is what improves code quality after AI generation a lot. With an end result much better than what I could typically could have come up with without AI.

I agree, that's what I do too. It gets the "boring code"-generation[*] step out of the way and lets me get to the meat. Like you read the generated code and think "why did it do this?" and then you realise that there was some case you missed entirely, or it made some incorrect assumption. Revealing hidden assumptions is something they are good at. So you clarify that and let it go again until it gets something that I intended.

The rust-lang/rust project doesn't like this workflow and I agree they have the right to reject it. I just doubt they can enforce it and whether they can hold that line long term.

[*] There is such thing as interesting coding, but stuff like "add this parameter to this API and fix all the places that need to know about this change/add checkbox to modify this field in the database/add support for disabling TLS certificate verification" is for me "boring coding".

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Balanced

Posted Aug 6, 2026 12:26 UTC (Thu) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link] (3 responses)

>The rust-lang/rust project doesn't like this workflow

Of course the policy leaves much room for interpretation, but I do not read it this way.

>>It's fine to use LLMs to answer questions, analyze, distill, refine, check, suggest, review. But not to create.
>>Pre-arranged, non-critical, high-quality, well-tested, and well-reviewed code changes that are originally created by an LLM are allowed, with disclosure.

In my view the process I described it not to *create*. It is *suggest*.
I as a human take this AI suggestion and then create the artifact.

Balanced

Posted Aug 6, 2026 15:08 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link] (2 responses)

>>It's fine to use LLMs to answer questions, analyze, distill, refine, check, suggest, review. But not to create. Pre-arranged, non-critical, high-quality, well-tested, and well-reviewed code changes that are originally created by an LLM are allowed, with disclosure.

>Of course the policy leaves much room for interpretation, but I do not read it this way In my view the process I described it not to *create*. It is *suggest*. I as a human take this AI suggestion and then create the artifact.

I don't think the policy leaves any room for interpretation, it contains a subsection specifically clarifying that the process you're describing falls under "originally created by an LLM" and is subject to the disclosure restrictions of the policy:

The meaning of “originally created by an LLM”

This document uses the phrase “originally created by an LLM” to mean “text that was generated by an LLM (and then possibly edited by a human)”. No amount of editing can change how it was originally created; the origin sets the initial style, and that style is very hard to change once it’s set.

For more background about analogous reasoning, see “What Colour are your bits?”.

This policy makes no distinction between LLM output that comes from a chat interface and output that comes from editor auto-completion. In most cases the output is “trivial” (see above under ⚠️), but regardless, it is not treated specially by this policy.

Balanced

Posted Aug 6, 2026 15:28 UTC (Thu) by mb (subscriber, #50428) [Link]

Sure. But this doesn't mean that "The rust-lang/rust project doesn't like this workflow".
They just demand it to be disclosed.

Balanced

Posted Aug 6, 2026 23:02 UTC (Thu) by intelfx (subscriber, #130118) [Link]

This policy makes no distinction between LLM output that comes from a chat interface and output that comes from editor auto-completion. In most cases the output is “trivial” (see above under ⚠️), but regardless, it is not treated specially by this policy.

Yeah, okay, I take my "reasonable" assessment back. There is no way in hell I am "disclosing LLM usage" in each and every commit just because the full-line code completion in my editor is technically LLM-powered.