Zig president says AI coding contributions are 'invariably garbage,' so he banned them

• Zig president Andrew Kelley said that the AI-generated contributions have “no value whatsoever.”
• “They have negative value, because they take review time away from the team,” Kelley said.

Zig doesn’t have a mandate to be maximally efficient like these public companies. Instead, “mentorship” is part of its core mission, Kelley said, making AI contributions counterproductive.

“We’re all trying to get better at programming,” Kelley said. “People who are sending AI pull requests, those people are not helping this goal.”

These AI coders are “drive-by contributors,” those who may submit a pull request or two, but will never join the core team, Kelley said.

The AI ban is also simpler. Kelley said that if he tried to say only “good” AI pull requests would be accepted, the reviewers would have to judge each one.

“If I say none whatsoever, then it’s a very easy policy to enforce,” he said.