[R] Chatbot -generated R Code

[Robert Knight]

Technically, one needs to ensure they know what is occurring throughout
that code.  E.g. one should know what is happening when a multuline
procedure in their own code comes out in a lambda function style from a LLM.

There is also an ethical element about which ones you used based on
supporting the success in the market of a given LLM's ideological
viewpoints.

Claude's terms of service specifically forbid machine learning outputs
which is basically most of the good statistical analysis you could do.
Deep Seek has serious things to consider if you talk to it, so my opinion
would be to get coding help from Mistral LLMs.



On Tuesday, December 9, 2025, Hans W <hwborchers using gmail.com> wrote:

> SORRY if I missed such a discussion somewhere on R-HELP
>
> For many years I wanted to write an R function that finds the closest pair
> of
> points among a, maybe huge, set of points on the 2-dimensional plane. I
> never
> did, perhaps considering the possible complexity of this task.
>
> Now I found a book, among others describing the "sweeping algorithm",
> perfectly
> suited for the problem. And as a test, I questioned chatbots like DeepSeek
> and
> ChatGPT about such a function - and mentioned the sweeping algorithm.
>
> DeepSeek, for instance, came immediately up with a complete, efficient
> solution
> and test cases that I checked with brute force. I can see that it utilized
> the
> sweeping algorithm, documented the code, and set up a help file. I made
> some
> changes, improved the code a bit, but still it is code generated by a
> clever
> chatbot, whatever I do.
>
> Now I ask myself: Is this a correct and lawful way to write code in the
> future?
> I am not even sure DeepSeek may not have used an implementation of the
> sweeping
> algorithm that is under ACM license and would not be allowed on CRAN.
>
> I wonder how one handles this matter? Will this be the future of code
> writing
> (for R and other languages)? I would really appreciate to hear your
> opinion or
> a hint to a discussion about it.
>
> Hans Werner
>
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