If you are generating tests with an LLM, it’s not deterministic.
Once the tests are generated, they have become deterministic - unit test code is checked in alongside the repository, CI (continuous integration) systems can prevent the code from merging to main branch until all CI tests pass. No LLM is involved in the test execution process, and if all LLMs stop functioning tomorrow, the tests still work just like they did before.
read anything an LLM wrote that’s longer than a hundered words? It’s usually immediately obvious
About 250,000 lines of code so far, and no... I don't read it all - my personal music player isn't that important, I just care that it works. Other more important projects I have read every single line. Even in the music player I have read a few hundred lines and skimmed a couple of thousand. Yes, the style is obvious. It's what you might call "too complete" attempting to cover lots of edge cases that a human would usually neglect, though as human code is maintained over the long haul, it tends to mature in that direction. And just because it's very complete doesn't mean it's perfectly correct, and that's a major point of conflict with me and LLM code, I'm constantly asking it to simplify because the complexity is easy to hide mistakes in. You know what happens when you ask it to simplify? It simplifies.
people will also do reviews with an LLM and this sort of stuff will just accumulate in the codebase with nobody to reject it.
That's a management / maturity problem. As new as all this stuff is, it's virtually inevitable there will be an adjustment process. Our company runs on processes and procedures, they average 50 pages each and there are thousands of them. I am given almost 100 of them to "train on" on a near annual basis - whenever they get revised. No way in hell can I do an accurate review of 5000 pages of intertwined procedures, not code, natural language work instructions. LLMs can. LLMs are. Simple questions to an LLM like: "review this procedure, is it internally self consistent" will find issues, real issues - usually minor - but undeniable when you read the review, the problem it describes is absolutely present in the document, page 14 says "X" and page 23 says "not X" and the context is basically identical - so which are we really supposed to do: "X" or "not X"? Well, that depends. Depends on what? Additional context and detail that the already too long 50 page procedure doesn't address. We just did an internal audit which turned up thousands of these mostly little issues. Addressing them is going to be... interesting. We've been in business over 70 years, we know we're not going to tackle it all in a single year, there will probably be a plan to work down the worst of the issues, then a second round for additional polish, of course corrective actions to ensure that we at least don't make things worse along these metrics with future changes... I bet by 2035 we'll have 90%+ of today's real observations fully addressed.
LLMs literally kill people both directly and indirectly
As does nearly every activity of life, both in human society and the natural world.