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Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

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Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#621
post #17

This is a very famous function [0] and likely appears multiple times in the training set (Google gives 40 hits for GitHub), which makes it more likely to be memorized by the network. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fast_inverse_square_root#Overv...

Arguably the most famous block of code, of all time. Maybe fizzbuzz but there are so many flavors of it. And InvSqrt is way more memeable.

So I don't know if on this alone it proves Copilot regurgitates too much. I think other signs are more troubling, however, such as its tendency to continue from a prompt vs generate novelty.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#622

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…

The practical utility will outweigh the legal concerns. Engineers using this are going to be more productive and this is a competitive advantage that companies won't eschew.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#623
post #589
post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ask your legal department about that. Sure, engineers don't care about licensing at all, but we are not the only players here.

Are legal departments in the habit of reviewing all code line by line? Seems like that would be cost prohibitive...

No legal come up to you and say stuff like:

"You guys aren't using any free software are you? Because you can't do that."

"You mean copying software source code without respecting the license, right? Because we absolutely respect all licenses fully."

"No I mean you can't use Free software! It's a clear management directive! What are you doing?!?"

"Is that an apple laptop you're using there? Ever had a look at the software licenses for it?"

Legal are generally idiotically ignorant about the real issues. Whose fault that is we can argue about.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#624
post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Changing master to main was something Github did when they were taking heat for their contract with ICE. It was a nice bit of misdirection that cost them nothing, achieved nothing and garnered praise in some quarters. ICE, of course, runs an actual concentration camp which has a slightly more troublesome history than the word master. Language policing is to racism what recycling is to global warming - an attempt to s…

y'know it really seems like both purpose and outcome need to be closely examined here, if we're going to be emphasizing actual next to concentration camps. what's the paradigm of a concentration camp? if we go straight for Auschwitz we'll get nowhere, how about the Boer concentration camps? Origin of the term after all. What was the purpose? To concentrate the Boer population during a total war against them, so they…

> Where is the war?

Central America, where the US has a history of funding politically aligned factions in conflict, contributing to today's instabilities which drive people to our border.

> Where is the excess death?

Mostly Central America, but keeping people in crowded stressful conditions during a pandemic can probably account for a few more.

> To put it succinctly, migrants who enter the country without filling out paperwork, and get caught, end up in one of these places for months-to-years while USG figures out what to do with them.

The US first funds wars in these people's home countries, then refuses to let them in when they want to live in a safer country, then rounds them up and puts them in camps because they came in anyway. That sounds like a concentration camp to me, even if the death rate is lower than other instances of the same thing.

Pedantic attacks on word usage is fun, though. Let me try it:

> ICE, of course, runs an actual concentration camp which has a slightly more troublesome history than the word master.

The history of the word "master" includes the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the institution of slavery in the US, a well known and extremely long running atrocity. That doesn't seem less troublesome than current ICE activity.

But if you consider what is being said, instead of seizing on exact wording, you can see the points that the action of running these camps is more important than the choice of word used to describe a code repo, and that as a form of concentration camp, the camps are bad - not that slavery wasn't a big deal (my facetious straw man), and not that the US are the British and the detainees are the Boers.

A few responses seem to focus on two of the words chosen in that post, and ignore this point about misplaced focus on choice of words.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#626
post #577

This reply from @AzureDevOps is bizarre: "We understand. However, the way to report this issues related to Windows 11 is through our Windows Insider even from another device. Thanks in advance." I think I'm gonna give "AI" a few more years. https://twitter.com/AzureDevOps/status/1411018079849619458

Wow. To think of it, nothing in this HN thread, including your link, is truly new and unexpected, but in this context it felt somehow more dystopian than ever. Talking about machines pretending to be humans doing stupid stuff, getting automated responses from machines pretending to be humans, that also are the same kind of stupid stuff... Almost feels like drowning.

The user that account replied to was having a conversation with Microsoft Support about Windows 11, and they replied to the wrong tweet thread with the wrong account.

https://twitter.com/lnplum/status/1410599036311130113?s=21

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I tried Googling this and couldn't find it. I also don't want to believe it because it seems like the world suddenly turned into an apocalyptic hellscape with no place for developers like me. Do you have a source?

I don't have a source to link, but I've also been told this by someone who works at Google. Is copy-pasting stuff verbatim from SO really that much of a thing? I use SO plenty, but have never considered taking anything verbatim.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#628
post #370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s quite literally stealing code from repos under a GPL license and suggesting them to people regardless of license (if any) they’re using. I do not see how this is legal.

I disagree with this attitude. Many demos such as this one with Quake code are intentionally looking for (funny) outliers by bending the rules. But this is not how anyone would use the system in a real scenario (no one should select license by typing "// Copyright\t" and selecting whatever gets auto-completed), so it doesn't really demonstrate any new limits besides what you could reasonably expect anyway (and what's…

Sure, people should double check the code I don’t disagree, but a proprietary code suggestion tool shouldn’t be suggesting licensed code at all; let alone GPLd code unless they can somehow verify the code base they are suggesting it become part of is GPL. That is the problem here and I don’t see how you can disagree with that.

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#629
post #618

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> "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. Very honest suggestion: learn how to touch type. You can still copy if needed, but your typed input will be much faster.

I'm somewhere between 45-75 wpm. But Ctrl+C Ctrl+V can type 300wpm!

Typing when you could paste is like having that Github Copilot put the right sentence right in front of you and you decide to type over it instead. Not only does it feel like wasted and robotic effort, typing everything leads to RSI.

I'm not sure why people disagree. Another symptom is that I insist on aliases for everything while others type out all the commands every time. Maybe I get distracted by the words when I type and lose my train of thought?

Re: Copilot regurgitating Quake code, including sweary comments

#630

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…

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.

The overwhelming majority of code on Github, even code under permissive licenses, require attribution of the original authors.
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