Yes.

I think AI has a place. But it's at best a junior software engineer. You have to look over the code, put it rough a full review process and treat it no different than a person.

As long as the source is open.

As long as the platform supports the common good.

AI code is stolen from open source, so as long as you're using it in the original intention of the code that was stolen, using Big Tech's money to create something free and open, I'm OK with it.

But also leverage AI fire accessibility. Language translations, alt text, etc.

Nope.

I would not. Joining a platform involves building up a profile there and contributing to building up the network effects of that platform, which makes it good for everyone there. If it's built on sand by people who don't know better then it could collapse at any time, making that investment worthless.

As an end user its not as much a consideration as how the software works and how it feels in use. I feel ultimately this is more of an issue for people running instances.

The one rub, the project admits that they used AI agents in the foundational stages of the project to accelerate development progress, then once the foundation was built, they analyzed, bug fixed, and documented the code, and brought in human contributors to assist with developing the project going forward

That sounds like a bad idea. LLMs are alright for writing boilerplate and some well established patterns, but are terrible at software architecture. The initial design and structure of a project are arguably the most critical phase of development. Any mistakes you make here could lead to many layers of problems on top of other problems later on. Eventually the codebase would have many ugly hacks and/or require extensive rewrites.

Unless the initial code was based on an outline and structure defined by an experienced programmer or software architect, IMO this would not lead to good results.

Noooo way.

I think people will find it harder and harder to find open source projects without AI coding in it.

AI (at least with recent models) can really be a time saver and a skill booster (up to a point), and open source projects are all about people giving their time away for free. You can boycott projects that use AI all you want, but will you be giving your time and do the work AI does for the project? I think that a lot of no-AI forks of existing projects will eventually die from lack of maintenance while the original AI assisted will continue to grow.

That being said, there is also a difference between a full bro-ai-vibe coded project from someone with little technical skill or knowledge ("Claude build me the next Facebook, secure, no bugs plz" ) and a more fleshed out project using AI to assist experienced developers.

No, that sounds gross.

The current software works well enough, and even if it doesn't, there's plenty of weird niche software written by queer furry critters.

-- Frost

I sometimes try slop-coded projects just for shits and giggles. So I'm willing to answer with a yes here. But(!) the question is very hypothetical. At least when it comes to majorly AI coded projects. Usually with these projects, I'll soon find out half of the features are only there on paper, in a grandiose README.md written by Claude. But it's more or less a lie and not there in reality. Or there's some stubs and boilerplate code for it but half the features don't work. Or the installation instructions are hallucinated, there's no such Docker container on Docker Hub, and I stop bothering. It'll usually go hand in hand with no one reading the issue tracker and all kinds of negative dynamics.

So... In a hypothetical world, where AI agents code useful software with many features... Maybe? But I don't think that's the reality we live in.

With projects which are mainly done by humans, and they found some way to make AI assisted programming work, I'd say maybe. Depends on the use-case. I wouldn't risk it deleting my email inbox or trust it with important data, unless they have a really good track record. But with social-media platforms I'd be willing to risk my data. I think it's also questionable to bet on a newer, fast moving project that gets abandoned randomly, after someone doesn't like to pay the Anthropic bill anymore.

For example I still use Firefox. And some more software which has AI in their workflow. I guess it's somewhat fine in some instances. But it tends to add other unsustainable dynamics and we can see how it's overall not healthy to companies like Mozilla. So at some point they might die anyway and I'll have to switch to something else.

Unless those features are what attracts a far wider swath of people than before, I wouldn't be mad at it but I wouldn't join because I worry about the technical debt that will build up over time. Bugs will get reported, some fixes will be issued but unless the lead keeps a hard thumb on it, the code will become less and less coherent over time.