Ask HN: Why can't AI fix all open source issues on GitHub?

Why can't you?

( "I, Robot" reference)

Because freedom is a function of wallet balance —— who paying the bills? Project founder, or Github?

https://dmf-archive.github.io/

To get AI to fix a specific issue, simply have a human fix it first.

If that doesn't sound very useful, well...

if github copilot were to crunch every issue and offer a patch, that's a ton of gpus and a ton of electricity to do it.

But i expect they offer it on ># stars repos at first to manage.

Before you even get to abilities:

1. Not every issue is fixable

2. Not every issue is something the project wants to change

3. Not every issue is well enough defined to be sure when it's fixed

4. Not every issue can be fixed without access to the reporter's complete environment

Then you need to actually pay for the work...

Same reason why that one manager who's always telling people how awesome AI coding is and how fast and effortless it makes development, isn't opening any pull requests.

AI isn't what it's hyped to be

Not every issue should be fixed. It's well known that users don't actually know what they really want.

Think of AI as a Genie, and consider how well granting 3 wishes works out in most stories.

Why can't AI deal with all these questions and issues on HN?!

It doesn't even need to directly address any of it, just lump the dupes other, bin the paywall references...

--Wait, why am I even making a list? The AI can do it!

Because, well, have you _seen_ its attempts to do that? LLMs just are not very good at programming. Really. There's a lot of hype, and billions being spent in marketing to make you believe that they are, but when it comes right down to it they are not good.

There are some ongoing experiments regarding this, this is one of them: https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/pull/115762

It can if we let it - but it will create the same amount of bugs or more.