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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#311

Post by ehsankia »

maxpert wrote: post #303

Now I am gonna have an outage because co-pilot wrote some code that had an error. People have implicit bias of code being reliable that they don't write, StackOverflow snippets are perfect example for that.

> StackOverflow snippets are perfect example for that.

You basically just explained why your worry is unfounded yourself. This is already the status quo. People already write buggy code and copy buggy code from SO all the time.

The goal of this isn't to write perfect code, that's still up to the programmer to do. This won't make a bad programmer not write buggy code magically.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#312

Post by tux1968 »

cnvm wrote: post #245
tux1968 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many jobs have developers helped displace in business and industry? I don't think it's controversial that we become fair game for that same automation process we've been leading.

Nothing is inevitable. Doctors and lawyers have protected their professions successfully for centuries. Only some software developers seem interested in replacing themselves in order to enrich their corporate masters (mains?) even further. Just don't use this tool!

> Doctors and lawyers have protected their professions successfully for centuries.

And one could argue that this means we all pay more for health and legal services than we otherwise would. You have to calculate both costs and benefits; what price does society pay for those few people having very high paying jobs?

Re: GitHub Copilot

#313

Post by lxe »

If you played with OpenAI beta, you won't be surprised -- it was only a matter of time until this becomes widespread.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#314

Post by amelius »

nightski wrote: post #237
natfriedman wrote: post #60

Hi HN, we've been building GitHub Copilot together with the incredibly talented team at OpenAI for the last year, and we're so excited to be able to show it off today. Hundreds of developers are using it every day internally, and the most common reaction has been the head exploding emoji. If the technical preview goes well, we'll plan to scale this up as a paid product at some point in the future.

I'm glad they find it head exploding but my concern is that it would be most head exploding to newbies who don't have the skill to discern if AI code is how it should be written. For a seasoned veteran writing the code was never really the hard part in the first place.

> For a seasoned veteran writing the code was never really the hard part in the first place.

Yes, to most coders this Copilot software is just a fancy keyboard.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#315

Post by gpm »

amelius wrote: post #305
stefanos82 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of questions: - the generated code by AI belongs to me or GitHub? - under what license the generated code falls under? - if generated code becomes the reason for infringment, who gets the blame or legal action? - how can anyone prove the code was actually generated by Copilot and not the project owner? - if a project member does not agree with the usage of Copilot, what should we do as a team? - can Copilot copy…

Does Copilot phone home?

When you sign up for the waitlist it asks permission for additional telemetry, so yes. Also the "how it works" image seems to show the actual model is on github's servers.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#316

Post by Tainnor »

chuinard wrote: post #296
stefanos82 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of questions: - the generated code by AI belongs to me or GitHub? - under what license the generated code falls under? - if generated code becomes the reason for infringment, who gets the blame or legal action? - how can anyone prove the code was actually generated by Copilot and not the project owner? - if a project member does not agree with the usage of Copilot, what should we do as a team? - can Copilot copy…

Some of your questions aren't easy to answer. Maybe the first two were OK to ask. Others would probably require lawyers and maybe even courts to decide. This is a pretty cool new product just being shared on an online discussion forum. If you are serious about using it for a company, talk to your lawyers, get in touch with Github's people, and maybe hash out these very specific details on the side. Your comment came…

> This is a pretty cool new product just being shared on an online discussion forum.

This is not one lone developer with a passion promoting their cool side-project. It's GitHub, which is an established brand and therefore already has a leg up, promoting their new project for active use.

I think in this case, it's very relevant to post these kinds of questions here, since other people will very probably have similar questions.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#317

Post by lawtalkinghuman »

gpm wrote: post #284
stefanos82 wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of questions: - the generated code by AI belongs to me or GitHub? - under what license the generated code falls under? - if generated code becomes the reason for infringment, who gets the blame or legal action? - how can anyone prove the code was actually generated by Copilot and not the project owner? - if a project member does not agree with the usage of Copilot, what should we do as a team? - can Copilot copy…

> - under what license the generated code falls under? Is it even copyrighted? Generally my understand is that to be copyrightable it has to be the output of a human creative process, this doesn't seem to qualify (I am not a lawyer). See also, monkeys can't hold copyright: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

In the US, yes. Elsewhere, not necessarily.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#319

Post by onlyrealcuzzo »

the_arun wrote: post #302
RivieraKid wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's your estimate of the productivity boost expressed as a percentage? I.e. if it takes you 100 hours to complete a project without Copilot, how many hours will it be with Copilot?

In addition, I would like to see GitHub reviewing my code & giving me suggestions on how I could improve. That will be more educative & a tool to ensure consistency across code.

I'm surprised this doesn't exist. Google, FB, and Apple (and I imagine Microsoft) have a lot of this stuff built in that is light-years better than any open source solution I'm aware of.

Given that MS owns GitHub and how valuable this is - I imagine it will be coming soon.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#320

Post by chongli »

dgb23 wrote: post #188
theden wrote: post #88

Calling it now, there will be a "Copilot considered harmful" post. If you need to go through the suggested code to ensure it's correct, you may as well write it yourself? If you glance at it and it looks about right, you can potentially overlook bugs or edge cases, you'll lose confidence in your own code since you didn't properly conceptualise it yourself. Potentially for newer developers it robs them of active exper…

I honestly think this is solving a real problem with commonly used languages and their lack of syntax abstraction and expressiveness. I can imagine this being very useful in helping to type out what I consider to be „mechanical noise“: Things that you have to type out to satisfy an expression rather than to convey semantics. A good example of how this type of noise manifests: Observe two programmers, both being simil…

I honestly think this is solving a real problem with commonly used languages and their lack of syntax abstraction and expressiveness.

Do you think there's a risk that a tool like this could lead to an explosion of the size of codebases written in these languages? It's great that programmers can be freed from the need to write boilerplate but I fear that burden will shift to the need to read it.

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