AI contributions to projects that aren’t your own are pointless. We all have access to the same models so you’re not doing anyone any favors by adding layers of noise. If the project maintainers want to tackle an issue that matters to you, they are in a far better position to craft a suitable prompt and review the changes than a rando over the internet with a Claude account.
Meanwhile, several companies are no longer offering bounties. It's becoming tedious to sift through all the AI-generated submissions, many of which are false positives.
Just require people submitting a bounty to post an evaluation fee. If it's a real bug they get a refund and the bounty. If it's AI slop, you keep the evaluation fee.
This might work but only if the evaluations are done through a trusted third party entity where none of the money ever reaches the company you're submitting to.
The lack of self awareness is shocking. This is a tragedy of the commons and they don’t even realize it. The whole thing was written by AI, so maybe not that surprising.
Typical tech/business bro mentality: no discussion at all about whether they should be doing it. Just: what can be done profitably and without getting your account banned? I almost envy them: No ethical voice tapping on your shoulder warning you to not be a jerk. Must be blissful!
Bounties are the most overfished pond when trying to making money with AI because the task to earnings step is atomic.
AI UGC with affiliate sales and other kinds of monetized AI content creation requires niche selection, monitoring, and some upfront risk, but has much better ROI on effort.
"Pick one repo and become a contributor first", add the operative "real" after a, and this should probably be the one and only point under "What I'd do differently"
AI contributions to projects that aren’t your own are pointless. We all have access to the same models so you’re not doing anyone any favors by adding layers of noise. If the project maintainers want to tackle an issue that matters to you, they are in a far better position to craft a suitable prompt and review the changes than a rando over the internet with a Claude account.
Meanwhile, several companies are no longer offering bounties. It's becoming tedious to sift through all the AI-generated submissions, many of which are false positives.
I think this period of false positives is ending, https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2026/04/22/high-quality-chaos/ that's according to the curl maintainer that initially blew the lid on the false positives problem.
Better models are better.
But smaller and cheaper models which produce more junk are cheaper.
The cost is with the project maintainer, not with the bounty hunter.
Just require people submitting a bounty to post an evaluation fee. If it's a real bug they get a refund and the bounty. If it's AI slop, you keep the evaluation fee.
This might work but only if the evaluations are done through a trusted third party entity where none of the money ever reaches the company you're submitting to.
> If it's AI slop, you keep the evaluation fee.
The number of problems this creates absolutely isn't worth it.
You've traded higher barrier of entry for a PR nightmare when someone publicly complains that you ate their legit submission fee as a money grabber.
Bounties already have that whenever you reject one for being nothing.
The lack of self awareness is shocking. This is a tragedy of the commons and they don’t even realize it. The whole thing was written by AI, so maybe not that surprising.
Typical tech/business bro mentality: no discussion at all about whether they should be doing it. Just: what can be done profitably and without getting your account banned? I almost envy them: No ethical voice tapping on your shoulder warning you to not be a jerk. Must be blissful!
Bounties are the most overfished pond when trying to making money with AI because the task to earnings step is atomic.
AI UGC with affiliate sales and other kinds of monetized AI content creation requires niche selection, monitoring, and some upfront risk, but has much better ROI on effort.
"Pick one repo and become a contributor first", add the operative "real" after a, and this should probably be the one and only point under "What I'd do differently"
Why are you so shameless?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Efficient-market_hypothesis