Note: this email is not an attack on anyone. it's just my personal analysis.
Hi Alan,
If it was realistic, I would agree, but we all know that "ai" tools are
designed to trigger the gambling addiction inherent to human nature and
*absolutely no one* uses these tools "responsibly". The temptation is
just too strong when you have started using it to generate code. Let
alone verify it. Once you've generated 3-4 working functions with it,
the temptation to trust the generation is immense.
This addiction is very strong, and hard to realize once you've switched
your deep mind into thinking that ""ai" could do something useful".
You will probably argue that I am wrong and that you are reasonable.
okay, but what about other people you have no control on influence on?
Just remember that this whole conversation started for the EXACT reason
that "ai" was not used responsibly for nuttx contributions.
So, I dont believe in "reasonable "ai" usage". It's a theoretical
well-being thought to allow yourself the use of a known bad tool that
save time when your boss gives you pressure.
Also, a calculator gives exact results 100% of the time. I dont need to
verify that a calculator actually gave me sqrt(2) as a result.
On the contrary "ai" only gives hallucinations that happen to do some of
the job some of the time, and no one reviews the code most of the time,
except in rare situations.
But it talks to you like a human would, says sorry when it wipes your
home dir, has a human name, confirms your opinions, and then we fall for
the "junior assistant dev" mental image, because it's designed for that.
We all know that seriously proof reading code is 10 times harder (and
more boring) than writing it in the first place. Because we're not in a
flow mental state when proofreading, there is no dopamine, no inspiration.
This gives even more hard work to nuttx reviewers.
Sebastien
On 7/15/26 21:27, Alan C. Assis wrote:
Hi Sebastien,
The number of real contributions developed using AI is still not high, that
is happening at this moment are contributions for fixes using AI.
But the number of contributions using AI will increase for sure as the AI
agents become more reliable.
Honestly I'm not against the use of AI, when done with responsibility by
people with skill to understand if that generated code has good quality or
not.
AI is just a tool, like a calculator. You can decide not to use a
calculator and do all the maths by yourself (in our head or in pencil and
paper).
Both approaches are fine, since you already know how to do the math in the
first place. The only problem in this case is that you will become lazy
(why do mental math if I can use a calculator?)
And just like a calculator, if used by a kid that doesn't know how to do
math, he will never master it (I think this is the real issue, for the
person themself).
BR,
Alan
On Wed, Jul 15, 2026 at 5:21 AM Sebastien Lorquet <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hello,
I agree with you but unfortunately, we're way past this stage already.
The usage of AI in NuttX was started "as a normal thing to do" even
before permission was requested and things were discussed on the mailing
list.
This is pretty much a tainted project and it has been for months, and
there is no turning back at this point.
Sebastien
On 7/15/26 06:36, Lwazi Dube wrote:
Was there an option presented for those of us who want to keep our
open-source projects 100% free of AI-generated code? That discussion
absolutely should have happened. If there’s a link to it, please
share—imposing these tools on people who didn't ask for them is not
acceptable.
On Wed, 1 Jul 2026 at 11:47, Matteo Golin <[email protected]>
wrote:
Hello everyone,
NuttX still has not adopted an AI policy, and the number of
substantially
AI-generated contributions is continuing to grow. Recently, the Godot
project adopted a new AI policy which I think is quite reasonable. [1]
I would like to suggest that NuttX adopt the AI policy from Godot [1]
(slightly modified for more clarity), as follows, and include it in our
contribution guide:
- *No autonomous AI agent use or vibe coding*
- A human must be involved in the coding process if patches are
submitted
- *No use of AI to generate substantial pieces of code*
- We require all code to be human authored. AI assistance should be
limited to menial things (like code completion, regex, formatting,
or
find
and replace).
- If you do use AI in some capacity to author code, you must
disclose it
in the PR discussion.
- *No AI-generated text in human-to-human communication*
- When our maintainers volunteer their time to review your issue,
PR, or
proposal, they do not want to talk to a machine. This is a basic
principle
of respect.
- Machine translations are still acceptable as long as the original
content was written by a human.
- This includes PR descriptions and comments.
- *All PRs must be reviewed and approved by a human before merging*
Please let me know your thoughts, I really think it is time to adopt
this
change as I am seeing more and more frequently that substantially
AI-generated PRs are submitted (what is really most frustrating is its
use
in human-to-human communication).
Best,
Matteo
[1]: https://godotengine.org/article/contribution-policy-2026/
