So this makes it official... this post[0] and the comments on the announcement[1] concerned about licensing issues were absolutely correct... and this product has the possibility of getting you sued if you use it. Unfortunately for GitHub, there's no turning back the clocks. Even if they fix this, everyone that uses it has been put on notice that it copies code verbatim and enables copyright infringement. Worse, ther…
Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
421–430 of 672 posts
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#422Earlier quoted context omitted.
If they get rid of licensed stuff it should be ok no? I really want to use this and seems inevitable that we'll need it just as google translate needs all of the books + sites + comments it can get a hold of.
Well... the whole training set is licensed, so you can't really get rid of it. I think that the technology they are using for this is just not ready.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#423Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#424From the GPLv2 licensed code: https://github.com/id-Software/Quake-III-Arena/blob/master/c... copilot repeats it word for word almost, including comments, and adds an MIT like license up the top
This exact code is all over github, >1k hits https://github.com/search?q=%22i++%3D+%2A+%28+long+%2A+%29+%...
"your honor, i would like to plead not guilty, on the basis that i just robbed that bank because i saw that everyone was robbing banks on the next city"
...on the other hand, that was the exact defense tried for the capitol rioters. So i don't know anything anymore.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#425Earlier quoted context omitted.
Actually the indentation of the first comment and the lack of preprocessor show it's not copied from this code directly but from Wikipedia ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overv... ) So It could be that the Quake source code is not part of the training set but the Wikipedia version is.
While I strongly doubt they would use Wikipedia as a training set, has anyone done a search of GitHub code to see if other projects have copied-and-pasted that function from Wikipedia into their more-permissive codebases?
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#426Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#427Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good luck checking every code line for license violations
SaaS idea: code linter, but for licenses.
At a previous job we had a audit from them, it seemed to not be too accurate but probably good enough for companies to cover their asses legally.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#428Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adding to this: I run product security for a large enterprise, and I've already gotten the ball rolling on prohibiting copilot for all the reasons above. It's too big a risk. I'd be shocked if GitHub could remedy the negative impressions minted in the last day or so. Even with other compensating controls around open source management, this flies right under the radar with a c130's worth of adverse consequences.
Do you also block stack overflow and give guidance to never copy code from that website or elsewhere on the Internet? I'm legitimately curious - my org internally officially denounces the copying of stack overflow snippets. Thankfully for my role it's moot as I mostly work with an internal non-public language, for better or worse, and I have no idea how well that's followed elsewhere in the wider company.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#429Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wait until people on the toxic orange site find out what has happened to AI Dungeon.
I'm out of the loop.
Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments
#430From the Copilot FAQ: > The technical preview includes filters to block offensive words And somehow their filters missed f*k? That doesn’t give a lot of confidence in their ability filter more nuanced text. Or maybe it only filters truly terrible offensive words like “master”.
Quoted post unavailable.
There was a post going around somewhere of a college's earnest attempt and change some language (like avoiding "give it a shot" because of the association of "shot" with guns). Would renaming all the various things we call "triggers" be ok, so we don't upset victims of gun violence?
So the master->main change was the line for some people, not others.