posted in Technology
The Rust programming language project is adopting an LLM policy
blog.rust-lang.org/inside-rust/2026/08/05/rust-langrust-is-adopting-an-llm-policy/Replying to @HaraldvonBlauzahn@feddit.org
From the article:
The policy summarizes itself this way:
It’s fine to use LLMs to answer questions, analyze, distill, refine, check, suggest, review. But not to create.
Uses in the first category are allowed, sometimes requiring disclosure. Uses in the second category are heavily restricted.
Seems pretty level-headed to me.
Interesting policy… I suspect it falls apart in the details though. Like, there are plenty of creative elements in responding to questions (and any of the other categories). That mean there will be lots of weird edge cases that are hard to adjudicate. And those GenAI components of “non-creative” categories will have ripple effects into the broader project and community (as they are everywhere, so maybe not that important for a.policy to grapple with, IDK).
It’s not like it is a legally binding agreement that needs a high level of quality in adjucation. If things seem off then it can be cited and you don’t have to prove it. Conversely, if something passes human review despite being codegen, well then I guess the codegen isn’t that bad
I’ve seen a pull request that was ultimately nonsensical but plausible and short, and purported to be needed in a configuration none of the maintainers had access to. It was a pretty harmless change either way so they were inclined to accept it. But they sought a little clarification and the clearly LLM response in comment got it shut down. No human stepped up to actually explain an understanding and the LLM sounded like a TV show writer writing tech, sentences that sounded credible but to anyone with understanding was nonsensical bullshit.
LLM code can sometimes be hard to tell in a short code change, but the prose when things are anything vaguely needing explanation is just so very very obvious.