GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering? • Hacker News Board

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#191

Post by not2b » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

baryphonic wrote: post #126

If someone could show that the "copilot" started "generating" code verbatim (or nearly verbatim) from some GPL-licensed work, especially if that section of code was somehow novel or specific to a narrow domain, I suspect they'd have a case. I don't know much about OpenAICodex, but if it's anything like GPT-3, or uses that under the hood, then it's very likely that certain sequences are simply memorized, which seems l…

You don't need to have a winnable case, just enough of a case for a large company (hello Oracle) to sue a small one. Is any version of Oracle-owned Java in the corpus? Or any of the DBs they bought (MySQL)?

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#192

Post by adn » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:29 PM UTC

schnebbau wrote: post #119

nextaccountic wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yes, and those people are violating the licenses of the code when they do that. It's not unreasonable to expect a massive company like microsoft to not do this on a massive scale.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#193

Post by orangeoxidation » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

vbezhenar wrote: post #85

Bombthecat wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect nothing less. The 0,01 will be super rich. You could call it endgame

They need to defend their capitals from the rest 99.99%. Expect huge combat robots investments and expanding of private armies. And, of course, total surveillance helps to prevent any kind of unionization of those 99.99%.

Unions (and striking) become rather impotent when the means of production run by themselves and you no longer need workers.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#194

Post by zeptonix » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:31 PM UTC

The tone of the responses here is absurd. Guys, be grateful for some progress. Instead of having to retype boilerplate code, your productivity is now enhanced by having a system that can do it for you. This is primarily about reducing the need to re-type total boilerplate and/or copy/paste from Stackoverflow. If you were to let some of the people here run things we'd never have any form of progress with anything ever.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#195

Post by ipaddr » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

Jgrubb wrote: post #173

thundergolfer wrote: post #8

Attempts 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 bette…

I always assumed that one of the reasons Google et al work on AI is because software engineers are too expensive.

So google pays the highest but still thinks engineers are paid too much? Why not pay them less.. the set high tier?

For google support employees cost too much.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#196

Post by z3ncyberpunk » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:32 PM UTC

thundergolfer wrote: post #8

Attempts 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 bette…

Stop talking about arguments we have been having for decades as if we have yet to even discuss them. We are crying out now, we have been crying out about AI since its depictions in sci-fi, it is precisely your sentiment that "ooOOoOhh we're gonna have something scary to deal with SOON" that is dangerous because the soon just pushes the argument out of your personal responsibility and off on someone else... when it really will be too late. Though I would argue we are already too late because we've sold out to corporations and their literal 1984 fascist fever dreams all for iphones, technicolor distractions, further bread and circuses.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#197

Post by yuppiepuppie » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:35 PM UTC

wongarsu wrote: post #177

belter wrote: post #101

One interesting aspect, that I thing will make it difficult for GitHub to argue and justify its not a a license violation would be the answer to the following question: Was Copilot trained using Microsoft internal source code or will it be in the future ? As GitHub is a Microsoft company and OpenAI although a non-profit just got a massive one billion investment from Microsoft (presumably not for free), will it start…

Alternatively, wait for co-pilot to add support for C++, then start writing an operating system with Win32-compatible API using co-pilot. There is plenty of leaked Windows source code on Github, so chances are that co-pilot would give quite good suggestions for implementing a Win32-compatible kernel. Then watch and see if Microsoft will try to argue that you are violating their copyright using code generated by their…

Oh man, that got meta super fast. Its like a mobius strip!

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#198

Post by anfelor » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:36 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #46

In the discussion yesterday I pointed to the case of some students suing turnitin for using their works in the turnitin database and the studemts lost [1]. I think an individual suing will not go anywhere. The way to create a precedent is someone feeding all the Harry Potter books and some additional popular books (twilight?) to GPT 3 and letting them write about some kids at a sorcerer school. The outcomes of that c…

Not a lawyer, but in that case it seemed to be a factor that turnitin was transformative, because it never sold the texts to others and thus didn't reduce the market value of them. But that wouldn't apply to copilot which might reduce the usage of libraries since you can "code" equivalent functionality with copilot now.

Would it be a stretch to assert that GPL'd libraries have a market value for their creator in terms of reputation etc.?

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#199

Post by WillDaSilva » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:37 PM UTC

amelius wrote: post #154

WillDaSilva wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was debating bringing up disruptors when I made the grandparent comment. My 2 cents: they can shift the balance of power at the very small scale (e.g. "some random nobody" getting rich, or some rich person going bankrupt), but the large scale power structures almost always remain largely intact. For instance, that "random nobody" may well get rich through the sale of shares in their company - now the company is own…

Uber vs taxi companies, Google vs Yahoo, or Facebook vs MySpace, Amazon versus all retailers ...

Exactly, in all cases the disruption was localized, and the broader power structures were largely unaffected. The richest among us - the owner class - were not significantly affected by all of these disruptions. They owned diversified portfolios, weathered the changes, and came out with an even greater share of wealth and power. Those who were most affected by the disruptions you listed were the employees of those companies/industries - not the owners/investors.

Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?

#200

Post by z3ncyberpunk » Wed, Jun 30, 2021, 3:38 PM UTC

Supermancho wrote: post #188

cmiga wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Humans are just sets of atoms, so protecting them is disconnected from reality? These reductionist arguments lead nowhere. Fortunately, IP lawyers -- including Microsoft's who are fiercely pro IP when it suits them -- think in a more humanistic way and consider the years of work of the IP creator. Food recipes are irrelevant; the often go back centuries and it's rather hard to identify individual creators. Not so in…

> Food recipes are irrelevant; the often go back centuries and it's rather hard to identify individual creators. That's not correct. Food recipes are created all the time and are attributed. From edible water bottles to impossible burgers, et al.

Okay, who invented the apple pie... you completely missed the point and then gave terrible examples of very modern "food" (your examples aren't even really food anyway)