Perspectives With Amy Kamala  🔗 **Source:** [Perspectives With Amy Kamala](https://share.snipd.com/episode/24815655-411b-4062-8de8-08d4f78cdc97) ## Highlights - **Soft Landing Into Open Source Contribution** - Amy joined the hosting team after DreamHost leadership encouraged staff to check Slack and she found a soft landing with familiar faces. - Her first meeting led to taking notes and moving from attendee to administrative contributor. Transcript: Amy Kamala So I'm from Los Angeles. And when I was younger, I knew these guys that started a web hosting company called DreamHost. And I knew them for quite some time and later on started working at their company in social support, then in technical support, and then became a WordPress support specialist. And that's how I got into the WordPress project and contributing to the WordPress project because they were kind of ramping up to become a WordPress host and to market themselves as A WordPress host and were pivotal in starting the hosting team, which is a team that I've been the most involved in. And the hosting team started in 2017. I started contributing in 2018 and I became a team rep in 2019. ([Time 0:05:59](https://share.snipd.com/snip/76bfeffd-03ec-4d04-b584-25c1945489d3)) - **Hosting Team As The Compatibility Conduit** - The hosting team bridges web hosts and WordPress core by facilitating testing, compatibility info, and shared handbooks. - They run distributed testing across ~70 hosts and maintain hosting and advanced administration handbooks with the docs team. Transcript: Amy Kamala The hosting team is basically an intermediary between web hosts that support WordPress and the WordPress open source project, communicating between the two, facilitating testing Between the two to help assure compatibility with hosting systems and also keep the development process informed with any issues that might be happening on the hosting end. So that's the main role. We have a distributed testing software that hosts about 70 different web hosts have installs on their systems, sending test data back to core, to the core team, which has been helpful For having insight into errors and issues over the years. That was developed way back when, or first developed way back when, I think in 2018 or 2017, something like that. And we also have two handbooks, the hosting handbook, which of course is standard for all the teams, the advanced administrative, the advanced administration handbook, which is Like a technical handbook for users and web hosts. And that's also shared with the docs team. ([Time 0:09:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0da7e7b1-2308-4d25-a421-5e8dc12605e7)) - **Democratized Decisions Create Timing Pressure** - WordPress decision making is highly democratized, leading to long public discussions and no single everyday decision-maker. - Tech leads and project leadership step in for escalation, especially on major or release-timing decisions. Transcript: Amy Kamala Could agree with that. Okay. Jonathan When we're talking about a kismet, that's what the issue is, right? It's a decision-making sort of problem. Yeah. Amy Kamala I mean, I think that stems from a few different sources, but the main thing being that it's kind of a democratized decision-making system where anybody and everybody can share their Opinion, comment on the tickets, object to something, suggest something, open a PR, so on and so forth. And so conversations tend to be pretty lengthy. And there's not a single final decision-making person. I mean, there is. There's Matt. But there's not someone making decisions about every single development problem. Like, they are day-to doing that. It's kind of people discuss it. There are tech leads, and the tech leads make decisions when needed. You know, but there's not like one point of escalation to make final decisions about these things. When it comes to major decisions, leadership obviously is there to call the shots. You know, like including that in the connector screen at all would obviously be something that leadership would be involved with. ([Time 0:12:14](https://share.snipd.com/snip/928638df-49a5-4cdf-88ee-8f8fceb000e9)) - **Last Minute Technical Tradeoffs** - Some merge decisions happen hours before release candidates when tech leads judge what is realistic to include. - Example: a new DB table for real-time collaboration sat ready but was postponed in favor of a temporary workaround. Transcript: Amy Kamala OK, so I could say that when there are bugs and a lot of discussion or debate about something, about a ticket or PR or feature, it frequently seems to boil down to right before the release. What is realistic to include that the release squad determines the tech leads. So the past few releases, the tech leads and dev leads have been like, or for this release, for example, the new database table for the real-time collaboration feature was available To merge. It wasn't completed, but it was available to merge months ago before the delay happened. But tech leads felt that it wasn't fully flushed out and it wasn't ready. So a temporary workaround was merged instead. And this decision was made right before one of the releases. I think it was like RC1. I mean, like hours before. And it was kind of because that was the point where a decision had to be made. So a decision was made and there was discussion about it. Everybody who was made themselves there could, you know, provide input. But ultimately it boiled down to like technically what was realistic, what was feasible and what the leads think is best for that type of thing. In terms of not merging something like that, you know, people could discuss that until they're blue in the face, but it would boil down to a technical lead actually merging the work or Not. ([Time 0:15:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4b19ed5c-beae-41d3-b9d7-40addd5fa418)) - **Preserve Human Voice In Public Communications** - Be cautious automating human-facing communications like release announcements because human voice attracts contributors. - Use AI for summarizing or drafting technical blurbs, but preserve personal voices in public-facing messages. Transcript: Amy Kamala Well, you know, there are some folks that really want to streamline workflow processes within the core team and in WordPress in general. And automation is one of the ways that that could be done. So some things are being automated that weren't previously automated. And there's discussion about what else could be automated. One of those discussions is release announcements, if release announcements should be written by AI or not. And there's some folks who are pushing that they should be and some folks who are not. And so in that regard, you know, in theory, the release coordinator position could be done by a bot. Not to like replace myself, but it kind of could be to do the release parties. It's already scripted. There's a script in advance that everybody follows for every release party. And that's to make sure that the party goes in a certain way and steps are followed in a certain way. There's not like if you don't say the exact sentence and, you know, that's wrong or anything like that. There's a process. There's a process. Yeah. And it easily could be a back and forth with a bot. But there's in that regard, there's not a push to replace release court. It's just a thought that I've had. There's not a push to replace release coordinators because humans are still valued. But for things like summarizing the technical aspects of features into a marketing blurb and stuff like that, there's definitely some of that going on. ([Time 0:32:33](https://share.snipd.com/snip/6ed65e5c-bff5-44c0-88b9-ff7bbd2dc7be)) - **AI Helps Tasks But Humans Drive Core Work** - AI is already used to streamline workflows and draft content, but WordPress core work remains human-led with reviews and merges. - Amy values contributor personality and fears losing human elements if everything is bot-driven. Transcript: Jonathan In your opinion, should we become more AI automated as a project or should we, have we, have we gone too far already or have we got the balance right? Like how are you thinking about it right now? Amy Kamala I don't think we've gone too far already, but I think we're definitely at risk of going too far. I'm not aligned with the current push with using AI to automate things like release announcements. I like voices from humans and people's personalities kind of leak into the announcements that's not going to happen if we're using AI. And it makes it special appealing. Something I noticed just yesterday during dev chat for the core team. So myself and the other core team rep are kind of alternating doing meetings. And so he did the meeting yesterday, but I had written up speaking of scripts. It's a lot of pressure to do these things in front of like, there's 53,000, I think, people in that channel. It's a lot of people that can see and watch what you're doing. So I'm a little bit more used to it now, but it definitely, there's some pressure for, I don't want to embarrass myself, which I do all the time, constantly, but I try to minimize the amount That I embarrass myself. So I usually write up what I'm going to say, at least a little like starter, like a draft before I do meetings for hosting team also. I started doing this years ago to kind of like take the pressure off. So I wrote up a script for the meeting yesterday in my voice, the way that I talk. It's like very peppy and bubbly and cute and there's hearts and kind of girly and so forth. But JB, the other team rep, does not talk like that at all. It's totally like it would be weird. It would be totally out of character. I would love it if JB gave that a go. Right? Jonathan I want to see a teddy bear hugging a love heart from JB. Amy Kamala You know, he's nice, so you never know. But yeah, I shared my script with him because we kind of determined who was going to do the meeting right before. So I was like, oh, here, I prepared this. Then I realized he can't even use this as totally useless to him because it's just like blatantly my voice. AI would ruin that where there's different people's personalities. And I like seeing how other team reps and other people talk and behave and like what kind of voice they use and how they share their personality and the things they share and stuff like That. And I would be concerned that we lose that human element that makes it, that's kind of a draw for contributors. ([Time 0:34:53](https://share.snipd.com/snip/31b01ac0-ffe5-4f14-9f55-bfaca51803d6)) - **Require Disclosure And Responsibility For AI Outputs** - Disclose AI usage when publishing or contributing so readers know what was human-made and what used AI assistance. - Encourage responsibility: contributors must read and understand AI-generated outputs before submitting. Transcript: Amy Kamala Are there restrictions on the, now I'm interviewing you. No, no, that's good. Jonathan They haven't been updated, actually. They haven't. And I would love to see them updated, but there are no restrictions. You can submit any AI plugin you want. What I'm concerned about is people dumping, you know, here's my five coded plugin. I want to get the badge. I want to be able to say I've got a plugin on the repo. Here you go. And then never returning to ever update it again. I mean, and even with the best intentions, maybe people have great intentions, but then they get excited by the next five coding project and forget about it. Luke And the thing that I learned over observing Luke's experience and thinking about my own is there's often a, because it's volunteers on the other side, there's people with very low effort That are generating these things. Then they're getting responses from a real human on the other side. And there's been at least a few situations that Luke and the team see where folks aren't even bothering reading those responses from a human. They're putting it into their model, and then they're copying and pasting what it says right back to the team, feels like a complete disregard for the time effort and energy from those Amy Kamala Reviewers i mean that's basically an ai submitting a ticket and i don't know um if there's like momentum to make guardrails for that with the plugin team um there's nothing official For the core team either, but I do know that devs especially are expected to, and also when we publish posts, it's expected to mention if AI was used. So folks know what they're looking at, that there's not an illusion that this was created by a human and that this other third party chain was. ([Time 0:40:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9d655ab0-5890-42a4-aec6-8e6637db7e03)) - **AI Hype Will Normalize Not Vanish** - Amy predicts AI hype will fade but integration will remain; tools will be common but not the singular cultural obsession. - She compares AI adoption cycles to past tech waves like React and notes humans still needed for maintenance. Transcript: Amy Kamala But I honestly, I think that it's just a trend right now. AI is just a trend right now, and it's not going to die completely. This is my prediction. It's not going to die completely. No way. But it's going to fizzle out, and people are going to kind of get sick of having to decipher if something's real or not. You know, there might be some backlash in that regard. But also, it just won't be as popular. It won't be the thing that everyone's talking about and so on and so forth in some years, I don't think. When React came out, everyone was building with React. It was like the most popular thing. And this has happened with quite a few different softwares and languages. Something comes out and everyone's totally preoccupied with it. And then it just kind of dizzles out. And it doesn't stop existing. It's still a tool that people use. But it's not the hot new thing that everyone has to jump on. And I think right now AI is just the thing that everyone's jumping on and everyone's talking about. Because everyone else is jumping on it and talking about it. And it's a new thing and it's very interesting. And there's a lot to explore and experiment with when it comes to that. And so people are just preoccupied at this point in time. But I don't think it's going to be a forever thing. I do think that AI is going to be integrated into our lives permanently in kind of big ways. ([Time 0:47:11](https://share.snipd.com/snip/4e895cb2-ef54-4950-a1e2-001b8a3424d5)) - **Hands-On Art For The Next Generation** - Amy teaches her 12-year-old animation basics (stop motion and editing) to encourage hands-on creativity. - She notes satisfaction from making art is intrinsic and warns offloading it to AI removes that fulfillment. Transcript: Amy Kamala Very interesting. I mean, my 12-year has shown an interest in animation, and I have a master degree in animation from UCLA. So I taught her how to make stop motions and edit basic animation basics. So she and her friends have been making animations. They're so, so cute. I wouldn't take them to DreamWorks. I mean, their age actually is pretty good for their age. Yeah. There's something really satisfying about making art, writing, dancing, drawing, playing music. There's that satisfaction and offloading that to AI deprives us of that satisfaction. And I think that people at some point, and or maybe even some people now, such as myself, you know, you miss the mark if you're offloading your creative process to something else to do, Because the point of making something is to make something. It's not so someone else sees the thing you made. It's not to have the final product. The process of making the thing is part of it. And yeah, using tools. ([Time 0:49:50](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2f625b0f-574f-4504-b51b-97e93b69bf3c)) - **Creative Practice Protects Cognitive Health** - Amy warns of societal risks if people over-rely on AI, calling it potential 'brain atrophy' from not exercising thinking and creative skills. - She argues reading, art, and music build neural pathways that AI can't replace. Transcript: Amy Kamala And because, you know, reading and doing art and playing music and all of these things actually build neural pathways and make you smarter and, you know, sharper and are actually quite Healthy for you. And if we offload all of that and stop doing that, as a species, we're going to get stupider. Luke I hope not. Amy Kamala I hope I'm wrong. We're going to continue the trend of getting stupider. Right. Right. It's not just that. ([Time 0:53:29](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1a5f0248-12a2-4e04-afe0-0eced969b861))