Re: Current policy on AI-generated code in NumPy

Hi,

On Sat, Feb 21, 2026 at 2:02 PM Ilhan Polat <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> I think we will not convince each other in this subject. My position is still the same;
>
> Ignoring the actual stealing done by these companies and then holding each other accountable for copyright is a no-go for me, using it further to resolve copyright issues, and thus washing it clean, is doubly so. I will not entertain that option and that's my personal position. I don't expect others to take this position. Defending copyright protection and ignoring the largest copyrighted elephant in the room does not seem a sound argument to me. Moreover, arguing over the tool as if it is oblivious and neutral is just factually incorrect, there are companies behind these tools. The technology is undoubtedly impressive and very useful, however the current arrangement of it is built upon legally unsound basis with very shady practices. Therefore I refuse to philosophize over it as a free-agent with shortcomings. In my opinion, the possible thing we can do is at least be defensive and if we feel like it, take advantage of LLMs to use it for automating mundane tasks to save time that FOSS maintainers definitely lack which is what I have been doing with LAPACK translation as I mentioned above. I still go over them line by line which takes insane amount of time though much shorter than writing it myself.
>
> So "No AI contribution is allowed" is a valid take for me if that would be the policy. Or "we will use common sense and make opinionated decisions, for trivial and otherwise laborious tasks we don't care but for involved bits, we won't touch it". It is also fine.

I'm not sure we are really disagreeing here - I think you're pointing
out something that you've made clear from the work you're doing - that
for mechanical tasks, where an expert can check the results carefully,
AI is a sensible use, and we have less concern about copyright.   So I
agree, either policy would be fine with me.  And I agree, either would
be preferable to the compromise that I'm suggesting for not-trivial /
mechanical AI-generated code, where we try to work out some procedure
whereby the contributor can screen for copyright violations.

Cheers,

Matthew
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