[Koha-devel] ChatGPT and Koha

Thu Feb 23 00:56:45 CET 2023

I understand what you’re saying because it says its knowledge after 2021 is limited, but it also has a greater breadth of knowledge than your 2 year-ago self. 

It claimed that some of its Vue.js answers were due to the conventions used by the Vue.js community, which was fascinating. It differed from some examples I found online in Vue.js documentation, so it would be interesting to know if the AI was out of date or if the documentation was out of date. Considering the explanation it gave for its answer, I think the documentation was probably out of date, as it gave a better answer than the documentation. (I found ChatGPT was able to answer my Vue.js questions much better than the official Vue.js documentation and most of the examples I could find online.)

I asked it to explain some general best practices for processing background tasks and distributed computing and it gave some excellent answers (and follow-up answers to follow-up questions). It certainly offers a better understanding of those topics than any Koha community developer has. I told it that its not particularly skilled at very specific tasks (like writing a Koha plugin), but it’s very good with fundamentals, and it mentioned that explaining fundamentals is one of its primary goals. It’s not there to write your code for you, but to offer advice/guidance to help you write code better. 

That said, it’s not always 100% correct either. You do have to consider its answers critically, and sometimes it’s just plain wrong, although usually its wrong in terms of minor details, and if you point out its mistake, it gets the correct answer. I was quizzing it on the use of some Perl POE modules from CPAN and there were times it tried to pass options that just didn’t exist (and have never existed). But its corrections were accurate and followed the concurrent programming designs I used myself years ago with those modules. 

On the other hand, I had it design a recursive algorithm in PHP for filtering data, and while its first attempts were close, the more I tried to get it to fix it, the worse it got until it was absolutely unusable. Perhaps the problem was the AI or perhaps the problem was with my instructions.

I just asked it to do an algorithm for converting ISBN-13 to ISBN-10 in Javascript. I already wrote one myself a few days ago, and it’s interesting to compare. Its algorithm is probably 98% correct, and it wrote it more concisely than I did (although we know I love verbosity). 

Licensing is certainly a tough topic (consider the licensing problems with GitHub Copilot). According to a post online, it claims not to have a licence on its code, but advises checking with legal professionals to be on the safe side. However, I don’t think a person would really be using the code generated by ChatGPT. The code it generates tends to be example code. The kind of thing you’d find in documentation, tutorials, Stackoverflow, etc. It’s good for illustrating concepts, but you wouldn’t necessarily want to copy/paste it, and just use it. 

It probably wouldn’t help a person to write “Koha code”, but it could help a person to better understand a concept they need to know while writing “Koha code”. 

Another example… I just asked “could you generate a functional operating system from scratch?” It said that it could not, but outlined what a person would need to do in order to write one, and gives some good warnings about why it’s probably not a good idea to try to do it solo haha. 

I know this email is too long, but I suppose I’d just emphasize that it’s a very interesting “helper”. 

David Cook

Senior Software Engineer

Prosentient Systems

Suite 7.03

6a Glen St

Milsons Point NSW 2061

Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899

Online: 02 8005 0595

From: Jonathan Druart <jonathan.druart at gmail.com> 
Sent: Wednesday, 22 February 2023 7:24 PM
To: David Cook <dcook at prosentient.com.au>
Cc: koha-devel <koha-devel at lists.koha-community.org>
Subject: Re: [Koha-devel] ChatGPT and Koha

For Koha core developers I am not sure it is relevant. Hasn't ChatGPT been fed with 2 years old data? With data we actually wrote ourselves.

So basically if I ask it something I am requesting what my 2 year-ago self knew?

I have certainly forgotten some stuff, but I also know that what was true 2 years ago is no longer 100% correct.

By the way, what would be the license for such generated code? Certainly GPLv3 for Koha, but what about Vue.js code for instance?

Le mer. 22 févr. 2023 à 01:53, David Cook <dcook at prosentient.com.au <mailto:dcook at prosentient.com.au> > a écrit :

Hi all,

Like many around the world, I may have been bitten by the ChatGPT bug…

Most of my ChatGPT questions have been more general in nature, but I figured I’d ask it about Koha, as there is a lot of public information, but it’s still a niche topic.

I asked it to generate me a Koha plugin, and it refused for a while, but eventually I was able to convince it to try. The result wouldn’t even compile, but it got a lot of things right. In other conversations, it’s made mistakes but always done a good job of fixing its mistakes. 

Has anyone else played with ChatGPT and Koha or ChatGPT in general (on IT topics)?

David Cook

Senior Software Engineer

Prosentient Systems

Suite 7.03

6a Glen St

Milsons Point NSW 2061

Australia

Office: 02 9212 0899

Online: 02 8005 0595

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