GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
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Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#2Posting this due to the recent unveiling of GitHub Co-pilot and the intersection on the ethics of ml training set data.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#3If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too?
We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#4If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
Unless you were using structures directly from said code, probably not?
Compare if you had only learned writing from, say, the Bible. You would probably write in a very Biblical manner, but would you write the Psalms exactly? Most likely not.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#5If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
That's what I wanted to ask, where do we draw the line of copyright when it comes to inputs of generative ML?
It's perfectly fine for me to develop programming skills by reading any code regardless of the license. When a corp snatches an employee from competitors, they get to keep their skills even if they signed an NDA and can't talk about what they worked on. On the other hand there's the no-compete agreement, where you can't. Good luck making a no-compete agreement with a neural network.
Even if someone feeds stolen or illegal data as an input dataset to gain advantage in ML, how do we even prove it if we're only given the trained model and it generalizes well?
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#6If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
Unless you were using structures directly from said code, probably not? Compare if you had only learned writing from, say, the Bible. You would probably write in a very Biblical manner, but would you write the Psalms exactly? Most likely not.
I've not seen Copilot in action yet, I was under the impression it doesn't use code directly.
In any case my original question was answered by the tweeter in a later tweet I missed https://twitter.com/eevee/status/1410049195067674625
I get where they're coming from but they are kinda just handwaving it back the other way with the "u fell for marketing idiot" vibe. I wish someone smarter than me could simplify the legal ramifications around this but we'll probably have to wait till it kills someone (or at least costs someone a bunch of money) to get any actual laws set up.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#7If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
That's what I wanted to ask, where do we draw the line of copyright when it comes to inputs of generative ML? It's perfectly fine for me to develop programming skills by reading any code regardless of the license. When a corp snatches an employee from competitors, they get to keep their skills even if they signed an NDA and can't talk about what they worked on. On the other hand there's the no-compete agreement, wher…
Copyright is going to get very muddy in the next few decades. ML systems may be able to generate entire novels in the styles of books they have digested, with only some assist from human editors. True of artwork and music, and perhaps eventually video too. Determining "similarity" too, may soon have to be taken off the hands of the judge and given to another ML system.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#8Attempts to litigate any license violation are going to get precisely nowhere I bet, but I find the actual license violation argument persuasive.
This is an excellent example of how the AI singularity/revolution/whatever is a total distraction and that a much bigger and more serious issue is how AI is becoming so effective at turning the output of cheap/free human mental labour into capital. If AI keeps getting better and better and status quo socio-economic structure don't change, trillions in capital will be captured by the 0.01%.
I would be quite a turn up for the books if this AI co-pilot gets suddenly and dramatically better in 2030 and it negatively impacts the software engineering profession. "Hey, that's our code you used to replace us!" we will cry out too late.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#9If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
That's what I wanted to ask, where do we draw the line of copyright when it comes to inputs of generative ML? It's perfectly fine for me to develop programming skills by reading any code regardless of the license. When a corp snatches an employee from competitors, they get to keep their skills even if they signed an NDA and can't talk about what they worked on. On the other hand there's the no-compete agreement, wher…
Take it further. You could easily imagine taking a service like this as an invisible middleware behind a front-end and start asking users to pay for the service. Some could argue it's code generation attributable to those who created the model, but reality is that the models were trained by code written by thousand of passionate users at no pay with the intent of free usage.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#10If I as an alleged human have learned purely from GPL code would that require code I write to be released under the GPL too? We should probably start thinking about AI rights at some point. Personally I'll be crediting GPT-3 as any other contributor because it sounds cool but maybe morally too in future
Possibly. We won’t know until this is tested in court. Traditionally one would want to clean room [1] this sort of thing. Co-pilot is…really dirty by those standards.