How a Closed GitHub Issue Led to My First Contribution to Inspect AI

(Photo by Kiyota Sage on Unsplash)

I’ve committed to spending 30 days working to make AI safer by contributing to Inspect AI, an open-source tool to evaluate large language models (LLMs). My goal? Make improvements to Inspect so it’s easier for AI companies and research organizations to evaluate models and, ultimately, make them safer.

So I started with a critical piece that I’m 100% confident I can improve – the documentation.

Good docs are often underrated – probably in part because engineers despise writing them, and in part because keeping them up to date can be tedious. But they can explain how things work to people who can’t (or prefer not to) read the code. They can teach people how to get started with a new tool. And they can unlock hidden features people might not otherwise notice.

As I was looking through the Inspect issues on GitHub, I saw one where someone asked “how do I build the docs?” The response helpfully spelled out exactly how to do it, which is great! That person can build the docs now, and they’ll be able to contribute.

But we can do better. The person who asked the question also made an excellent point in a follow-up comment:

Someone should put it in the README.

And now, it’s there. My PR was merged, making me an official contributor to Inspect AI! And future docs contributors will have an easier time getting started and making improvements.

The lesson? Dig through the open issues – and the closed ones – to find a small problem you can solve. After that, just do what you always do as a software engineer when presented with a problem – solve it.