There are several valid reasons to "falsify" commit history.
- You need to remove trash commits that appear when you need to rerun CI.
- You need to remove commits with that extra change you forgot.
- You want to perform any other kind of rebase to clean up messages.
I assume in this thread some people mean squashing from the perspective of a system like Gitlab where it's done automatically, but for me squashing can mean simply running an interactive (or fixup) and leaving only important commits that provide meaningful information to the target branch.
The way I see it, it's less about the technicalities of accuracy and more about the long term human and societal problems it presents when widely adopted.
On one hand, every new technology that comes about unregulated creates a set of ethical and in this particular case, existential issues.
- What will happen to our jobs?
- Who is held accountable when that car navigation system designed by an LLM went haywire and caused an accident?
- What will happen with education if we kill all entry level jobs and make technical skills redundant?
In a sense they're not new concerns in science, we research things to make life easier, but as technology advances, critical thinking takes a hit.
So yeah, I would say people are still right to be weary and 'bullish" of LLMs as it's the normal behaviour for disruptive technology, and one will help us create adequate regulations to safeguard the future.
Being wrong when you are building a grocery management app is one thing, being wrong when building a bridge is another.
For those sensitive use cases, it is imperative we create regulation, like every other technology that came before it, to minimize the inherent risks.
In an unrelated example, I saw someone saying recently they don't like a new version of an LLM because it no longer has "cool" conversations with them, so take that as you will from a psychological perspective.
I worked for an authority that issued digital certificates for SSL and digital signatures. It's not only about providing encryption but also about trust, when a top level entity issues a SSL certificate, a number of identity validations are carried out, adding an extra layer or confidence on that website.
This may seem inconsequential for static websites without PII, however most browsers consider it important as it reduces the risk for all parties involved when encrypted communication is used and the content providers has taken basic steps for Identity verification.
There are logic flaws with this approach to security imo, but it's the most commonly used technique at the moment.
I wouldn't say it's an archaic problem, an example I can think of is writing scripts for infrastructure running minimal docker images where you want to keep the image size to a minimum, you would usually need to support both bash and other shells.
- You need to remove trash commits that appear when you need to rerun CI. - You need to remove commits with that extra change you forgot. - You want to perform any other kind of rebase to clean up messages.
I assume in this thread some people mean squashing from the perspective of a system like Gitlab where it's done automatically, but for me squashing can mean simply running an interactive (or fixup) and leaving only important commits that provide meaningful information to the target branch.