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GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

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Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#111

Post by pron »

nextaccountic wrote: post #96
KMnO4 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be the demise of the human race. I’m not entirely opposed to that, though. When AI inevitably outperforms humans on almost all tasks, who am I to say humans deserve to be given those tasks?

In this case we should be able to work less and enjoy the benefits of automation. We just need to live in an economic system where the economic value is captured by the people at large, and not a minority that owns capital.

Or maybe they'll decide they'd be better off enjoying the automation of you working for them. :)

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#112

Post by Dracophoenix »

AJ007 wrote: post #72
Dracophoenix wrote: post #49

This goes into one of my favorite philosophical topics: John Searle's Chinese Room. I won't go into it here, but the question of whether an AI is actually learning how to code or simply substituting information based on statistically common practices (or if there really is a difference between either) is going to be one hell of a problem for the next few decades as we start to approach fine points of what AI is and h…

And this applies to everything, not just source code. I’m just presuming we have a future where you can consume unique content indefinitely. Such as instead of binge watching Star Trek on Netflix you press play and new episodes are generated and played continuously, 24/7, and they are actually really good. Thus intellectual property becomes a commodity.

While headway has been made in photo algorithms like StyleGAN, GPT-3's scriptwriting, and AI voice replication, we aren't even close to having AI-generated stick cartoons or anime. At best, AI generated Star Trek trained on old episodes would produce the live-action equivalent of limited animation; it would reuse the most liked parts over an over again and rehash the same camerawork and lens focus that you got in the 60's and the 90's. There wouldn't be any new planets explored, no new species, no advances in cinematography, and certainly no self-insert character (in case you wanted to see - simulation of how you'd fair on the Enterprise). It wouldn't add anything new as far as I can see. Now if there was some way to recreate all the characters in photorealistic 3D with Unreal Engine, feed them a script, and use some form of intelligent creature and planet generation, you may get a little closer to creating a truly new episode.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#113

Post by cxr »

Dracophoenix wrote: post #49

This goes into one of my favorite philosophical topics: John Searle's Chinese Room. I won't go into it here, but the question of whether an AI is actually learning how to code or simply substituting information based on statistically common practices (or if there really is a difference between either) is going to be one hell of a problem for the next few decades as we start to approach fine points of what AI is and h…

> the most recent Oracle vs. Google case has already settled a major point: APIs don't violate copyright. And as Github co-pilot is API (A self-modifying one, but an API nonetheless), Microsoft has a good defense

That's a wild misconstrual of what the courts actually ruled in Oracle v. Google.

(And to the reader: don't take cues from people banging out poorly reasoned quasi-legal arguments in off-the-cuff comments.)

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#114

Post by joeyh »

invokestatic wrote: post #69
jordemort wrote: post #56

What happens when someone puts code up on GitHub with a license that says "This code may not be used for training a code generation model"? - Is GitHub actually going to pay any attention to that, or are they just going to ingest the code and thus violate its license anyway? - If they go ahead and violate the code's license, what are the legal repercussions for the resulting model? Can a model be "un-trained" from a…

By uploading your content to GitHub, you’ve granted them a license to use that content to “improve the Service over time”, as specified in the ToS[1]. That effectively “overrides” any license or term that you’ve specified for your repository, since you’ve already licensed the content to GitHub under different terms. Of course, people who are not GitHub are beholden to the terms you specify. [1] https://docs.github.co…

Anyone can upload someone else's freely licensed code to github. Without giving them such a license.

I do not upload my code to github, or give them any special permissions, and I am confident my code was included in the model's corpus.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#115

Post by all_rights_rsvd »

toyg wrote: post #110
all_rights_rsvd wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I post my code publicly, but with an "all rights reserved" licence. I don't mind everyone reading my code freely, but you can't use it for anything but learning. If I found out they were ingesting my code I would be angry. It's like training your replacement. I don't use GitHub, anyways, but now I'll definitely never even think about it.

Technically then I'm infringing as soon as I clone your repo, possibly even as soon as a webserver sends your files to my browser. "All rights reserved" makes sense on final items, like books or physical records, that require no copy or change after owner-approved manufacturing has taken place. It doesn't really make sense on digital artefacts.

So don't clone it, read it online. I reserve all rights, but I do give license to my host to make a "copy" to let you view it. I do that specifically to prevent non-biological entities like corporations or AI from using my code. If you're a biological entity, I specify you can email me to get a license for my code for a specific, defined purpose. I have a conversation with that person, then I send them a record number and the terms of my license for them in which I grant some rights which I had reserved.

Also, in your example, the copyright for the book or dvd is for the content, not the physical item. You can do anything you want with that item but not the content. My code is similar, I'm licensing my provider to serve you a visual representation of the files so you can experience the content, not giving you a license to run that code or use it otherwise.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#116

Post by kall »

midoBB wrote: post #42
djrogers wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The dataset is all freely available open source code, right? Just because GH hosts it doesn’t mean the rest of the world can’t use it for the same purpose.

You'd have to hit rate limiting multiple times no?

Arenmt mirrors of all GH code available, for example on BigQuery public datasets. If it‘s there, it should be available in a downloadable format too?

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#117

Post by petercooper »

methyl wrote: post #23
enriquto wrote: post #11

It certainly seems to be a laundering enabler. Say that you want to un-GPL-ify some famous copylefted code that is on the training database. You type a first innocuous characters of it, then the co-pilot keeps completing the rest of the same exact code, for it offers a perfect match. If the completion is not exact, you "twiddle" it a bit until it becomes. Bang! you have a non-gpl copy of the program! Moreover, it is…

What stops you to do the same, without the AI part?

That's what I was wondering. I've never been interested enough to steal anyone else's code, but with all the code transformers and processing tools nowadays, I imagine it's trivial to translate source code into a functionally equivalent but stylistically unique version?

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#118

Post by rlpb »

enriquto wrote: post #11

It certainly seems to be a laundering enabler. Say that you want to un-GPL-ify some famous copylefted code that is on the training database. You type a first innocuous characters of it, then the co-pilot keeps completing the rest of the same exact code, for it offers a perfect match. If the completion is not exact, you "twiddle" it a bit until it becomes. Bang! you have a non-gpl copy of the program! Moreover, it is…

> Bang! you have a non-gpl copy of the program! Moreover, it is 100% yours and you can re-license it as you want. This will be a boon for copyleft-allergic developers!

Thinking that this would conveniently bypass the fact that your goal was to copy the code seems to be the most common legal fallacy amongst software developers. The law will see straight through you, and you will be found to have infringed copyright. The reason is well explained in "What Colour are your bits?" (https://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/entry/23).

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#119

Post by schnebbau »

nextaccountic wrote: post #108
schnebbau wrote: post #25

Newsflash everyone, if you open source your code it's going to be copied or paraphrased anyway.

It should be copied and paraphrased, but respecting the license. This means, among other things, crediting the author.

It may be hard to believe, but there are sick and twisted individuals in this dangerous world who copy from github without even a single glance at the license, and they live among us.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#120

Post by yyyk »

koonsolo wrote: post #54

I propose we as developers, start a secret society where we let the AI write the code, but we still claim to write it manually. In combination with the new working from home policies, we can lay at the beach all day and still be as productive as before. Who is in favor of starting it? ;)

This already happened in a way:

https://www.latimes.com/business/la-xpm-2013-jan-17-la-fi-mo...

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