Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments • Hacker News Board

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#541

Post by rorykoehler » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:23 PM UTC

okamiueru wrote: post #514

rorykoehler wrote: post #504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Check out the recent Marc Rebillet stream with Flying Lotus and Reggie Watts. They absolutely destroy the bs around the use of the word master. I think both FL and RW will be quite representative of how African Americans (and the rest of the world) feel about this.

Do you have a timestamp? As enjoyable as as it is to listen to each of them, the stream was mostly music and almost two hours long.

The next couple of minutes from here https://youtu.be/0J8G9qNT7gQ?t=3984

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#542

Post by nadsat2021 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

I don't understand why this is an issue. And now I have a tool to do my coding, as well as my social media contributions:

    "'Sweary comments' is not grammatically correct English." -> GPT-2 ->

    "Sweary comments" is not grammatically correct English. The "sweary" meaning is used as slang by those in charge, especially the ones who get a free ride through the media, for the sake of a quick buck, or the sake of getting a better job with a promotion. The word is commonly used in a social context and comes from an actual "sweary" comment. The statement or phrase, "You're too shy!" is derived from this phrase: "I wish he were as outgoing as you."

Am I right?

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#543

Post by shados » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #470

shados wrote: post #368

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even in the 90s that was a solved problem in Visual Basic with autocomplete. That a lot of dev environments "lost" the ability to do it is mind boggling. With that said, doesn't Rubymine let you do that with autocomplete with the prompt giving you all the info you need? (I haven't done Ruby in a long time). Still, having to look up the doc or run the code to figure out how to type it is orders of magnitude slower tha…

orders of magnitude slower than proper auto complete Having worked extensively with verbose but autocomplete-able languages like Java, compact dynamic languages like Ruby, and a variety of others including C, Scala, and Kotlin, I've come to the conclusion that, for me, autocomplete is a crutch and I develop deeper understanding and greater capabilities when I go to the docs. IDE+Java encourages sprawl, which just fur…

That's totally cool but the grandparent was talking about remembering shit they already knew. Not everyone has a fantastic memory, and remember the arguments are A then B or B then A doesn't deepen your understanding of a language. Most of the time the autocomplete and the official doc use the exact same source anyway, formatted the same way, with the same info.

But if it works for you, more power to you!

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#544

Post by summerlight » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:31 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #420

eganist wrote: post #384

Earlier 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.

Google (and most of other big techs I guess?) also explicitly prohibit employees from use of stack overflow code snippets.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#545

Post by Osiris » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

I assumed it was trained on source code that was explicitly licensed with a permissive license. Are they training it using private unlicensed repos also?

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#546

Post by mustacheemperor » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:35 PM UTC

rorykoehler wrote: post #503

gunapologist99 wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apples and oranges: Stack overflow snippets are explicitly granted under a permissive license, as long as you attribute. https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing It appears that the code that copilot is using is created under a huge variety of licenses, making it risky. On the other hand, a small snippet in a function that is derived from many existing pieces of other code may fall under fair use, even if it is not u…

It just seems bizarre that this wasn’t flagged internally at Microsoft. They have tons of compliance staff.

Maybe we’ll even get a sneak peak at Windows 11’s source code. Time to start writing a Win32 API wrapper and see what the robot comes up with!

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#547

Post by corobo » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

blooalien wrote: post #516

mediaman wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who really copies stack overflow snippets verbatim? It's usually just easier to refer to it for help figuring out the right structure and then adapt it for your own needs. Usually it needs customization for your own application anyway (variables, class instances, etc).

I don't think I've ever copied code directly from any of the Stack* sites. I generally read all the answers (and comments) and then use what I learn to write my own (hopefully better) code specific to my needs.

Yeah my experience has always been "ohhh that solution makes sense" then I go write it myself

If nothing else this whole copilot thing is helping ease some chronic imposter syndrome

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#548

Post by LAC-Tech » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:43 PM UTC

username90 wrote: post #406

throwaway2037 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

> For co-workers not familiar with the history of slavery in the United States, there is always a pause, and then some confusion about the changes. After explaining the historical context, 99% of people reply: "Oh, I understand. Thank you to explain." Most people answer like this when they realize you are an unreasonable person who refuse to listen. Happens all the time, like "Oh, I understand (you are one of those).…

Imagine 'explaining' the historical context to someone from say, Brazil.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#549

Post by LAC-Tech » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:47 PM UTC

sseagull wrote: post #430

throwaway2037 wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Everyone has a line of how much they are willing to change their language, though. There will always come a point where someone will think some change is "silly", even though the old term may have upset some people. And almost every term has some sort of baggage associated with it. There was a post going around somewhere of a college's earnest attempt and change some language (like avoiding "give it a shot" because o…

> Everyone has a line of how much they are willing to change their language, though.

But that line is constantly moving though. People are forced to adapt, or they are ostracised socially and economically.

If prestigious organisations, people and institutions decide "master/slave" is an immoral thing to say, I have no choice. Eventually I'll need to fall in line or my livelihood will be at risk.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#550

Post by Noumenon72 » Fri, Jul 02, 2021, 9:49 PM UTC

TillE wrote: post #491

canadev wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah! I've uh, ... never copied a bit of code into my repo verbatim, right? yeah right. I wish. (Not saying every dev does this)

I've copied plenty of Microsoft sample code verbatim, because the Win32 API sucks and their samples usually get the error handling right. But, I can't think of a single scenario where I've copied something from Stack Overflow. I'm searching for the idea of how to solve a problem, and typically the relevant code given is either too short to bother copying, or it's long and absolutely not consistent with how I want to…

"Too short to bother copying"? I copy single words of text to avoid typing and typos. I would never type out even a single line of code when I could paste and edit.