Clout and resume building
Comment on I prompt injected my CONTRIBUTING.md – 50% of PRs are bots
JensSpahnpasta@feddit.org 2 days ago
But what is the purpose of this? So people are setting up bots that are sending PRs to open source projects, but why?
CaptainSpaceman@lemmy.world 2 days ago
atopi@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 days ago
from the comments in the article, it seems they are just trying to help, but have little to no coding experience
which is strange considering that using AI is something the mantainer can do too
tabular@lemmy.world 2 days ago
Poisoning the well.
Companies make money using open source code and ignore the licenses which compel them to release their source code (out of ignorance, laziness and selfish gains). While AI generated cannot be copyrighted then you cannot apply copyleft licenses to that code. Telling human authored code from AI slop may be less than 100% obvious to tell, which could may make it more difficult to enforce copyleft compliance in a lawsuit.
Anon518@sh.itjust.works 2 days ago
Perhaps they don’t want to take the time to code it themselves, or they don’t have the coding expertise but want missing features.
Gibibit@lemmy.world 2 days ago
They want to get listed as contributors on as many projects as possible because they use their github as portfolio.
Also a relatively easier way to keep your github history active for every day I guess, compared to making new projects and keeping them functional.
In other words, its to generate stupid metrics for stupid employers.
edgesmash@lemmy.world 2 days ago
I’d like to emphasize the “stupid” bit when it applies to “employers” more than “metrics”. As an interviewer, I have used, among other things, an applicant’s public Github as part of my process. But I’d like to think I do it right because of two reasons: I look deeper than just the history graph, and I only use this (among other metrics) for ranking resumes.
I’ll look at their history, sure, but I’ll also look more in depth at repos, PRs, comments, issues, etc. I’ll clone their repos and try running their code. I’ll review their public PRs and read their comments and discussions, if any. I try to get an idea of if I’d like working with this person. If I saw someone with a constant feed of PRs to seemingly random open source projects, that would cause me concern for this exact reason.
And all that is one of the things I do to rank resumes in order of interview preference and to give me questions to ask in the interview. I’ll look for things that suggest the candidate has already been vetted successfully by others (e.g., Ivy League school, FAANG, awards, etc.). I’ll look for public content that suggests the candidate knows what they are doing. But all this does is sort the resumes for me. My entire decision-making process is fed by the interview.
Granted, AI assistants are getting good enough that they can potentially coach candidates through remote interviews (and eventually in person interviews, with glasses or earpieces or something.). Eventually we’ll have to put candidates in Faraday cages with metal detectors for interviews (that is unless AI takes over all development). I’m hoping to be retired by then.