TechTakes

On one of the BlueSky threads going over over the test code, one of the things they uncovered was some stuff running as root which in no world should be necessary. He may not have just prompted Claude to "convert test suite to python", but there's a lot there that seem like clear red flags in terms of AI slop code.

Which is no surprise, really, given that properly proof-reading AI code is often much more labour intensive than just writing the code oneself. It's easy for things like this to slip through the cracks, even if you are trying to check the AI output

It's a perfect example of how "using LLMs for test coverage" can also be harmful. He expected the tests to to prevent introduction of said regressions, probably based on a combination of the quantity of tests and their style (they look like what decent human written tests look like). But the tests are AI slop, and so they give a lot less value per line of code than he expects, hence a significant regression.

It is literally useful to call these tests AI slop, and the problem is in part caused by not calling them AI slop, and having consequent inflated expectations.

I commend to you jonny's thread on the tests:

https://neuromatch.social/@jonny/116666900898570791

It keeps turning out that when you look at the AI output, it's shit.