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I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

thelig.ht

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Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#171

Post by lloydatkinson »

EugeneOZ wrote: post #68
Nicksil wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Some unknown person is trying to get some hype on “cancel github” cry. >I don't give a shit about the Copilot, but I care even less about Rian Hunter and his statements. This is untrue because you had a choice of not saying anything at all and carrying on (clearly not giving a shit) or take the time to leave such a comment (giving enough of a shit to inform everyone you don't give a shit.) So far this and Lloyd's is…

This is true. And I didn't even read your nickname because I don't give a shit about a shmuck who is trying to tell me what I care about :)

It’s amazing he seems so butt hurt. I think it’s an alt of the blog author.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#172

Post by WillDaSilva »

danielbln wrote: post #151
nomercy400 wrote: post #146

This is exactly why people have issue with Github's Copilot. It's not the technology, but the fact that any code you pushed to GitHub in the past 13 years is now 'accessible' to anyone. Private repo? Paid account? Deleted repo five years ago? Deleted repo today? Proprietary code? Embarassing commits? Accidental API keys or passwords in commits? All 'available'. It feels like the entirety of GitHub was just 'leaked',…

Wasn't Codex (the tech underlying CoPilot) trained on purely publicly available repos?

The issue of deleted repositories being available through it would still exist. Whether or not GitHub should be blamed for that is another matter.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#173

Post by linkdd »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #162

Anyone know how they're hosting their repositories? https://thelig.ht/code/ is actually kind of nice and minimalist; I was hoping to set up the same thing, mostly just for kicks.

This reminds me of cgit[1], but the UI seems even simpler.

[1] - https://git.zx2c4.com/cgit/about/

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#174

Post by lamontcg »

lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

I'm more concerned with all the poor code and security issues that Copilot has been trained on. Garbage In, Garbage Out.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#175

Post by lars »

danielbln wrote: post #151
nomercy400 wrote: post #146

This is exactly why people have issue with Github's Copilot. It's not the technology, but the fact that any code you pushed to GitHub in the past 13 years is now 'accessible' to anyone. Private repo? Paid account? Deleted repo five years ago? Deleted repo today? Proprietary code? Embarassing commits? Accidental API keys or passwords in commits? All 'available'. It feels like the entirety of GitHub was just 'leaked',…

Wasn't Codex (the tech underlying CoPilot) trained on purely publicly available repos?

Yes, it was. From their site: "It has been trained on a selection of English language and source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub."

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#176

Post by lolinder »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #162

Anyone know how they're hosting their repositories? https://thelig.ht/code/ is actually kind of nice and minimalist; I was hoping to set up the same thing, mostly just for kicks.

Googling a bit of the stylesheet suggests that it's stagit, a static page generator for git repos:

https://codemadness.org/stagit.html

Contrast these two pages, and you'll see it's a match:

https://codemadness.org/git/bmf/log.html

https://thelig.ht/code/block-tracing/log.html

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#177

Post by MontyCarloHall »

_ofdw wrote: post #155

Feels like everyone is missing the point: Copilot will ultimately serve to weaken the arguments in support of software patents and copyright. That can only be a good thing for society (though perhaps not for rent seekers).

Surprised I had to scroll so far to find this, given how copyleft and straight-up anti-IP so much of the open source community is.

I think a lot more people on this site (and in the FOSS community in general) would be on board with Copilot if it respected viral licenses, e.g. if it had a way of inferring that the code it was copying verbatim were GPL-3 and warned the user that including it in their project would require them to GPL-3 their project as well.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#178

Post by throwaway_09870 »

Semi-related question, The MIT license template has "Copyright © 2021 ", but don't I have to register copyrights somewhere? I've always been confused by this. Do I just stick "Copyright MyName" in my GitHub repos? It seems like this is what most people do..

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#179

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew »

IncRnd wrote: post #74
lacker wrote: post #34

I thought this was a pretty good thread (by an ex-Wikipedia lawyer) on Twitter about the IP meaning of Copilot. https://twitter.com/luis_in_brief/status/1410242882523459585... And this is a longer article about how IP and AI interact: https://ilr.law.uiowa.edu/print/volume-101-issue-2/copyright... I am not a lawyer, but I am capable of summarizing the thoughts of lawyers, so my take is that in general, fair use allow…

> Nobody is really being hurt when a new tool makes it easier to copy little bits of code from the internet. That's the first time I've heard copilot get described as copying little bits of code from the Internet. Copilot aggregates all github source code, removes licences from the code, and regurgitates the code without licenses. Furthermore, both github and the programmers using copilot know this. Look at any one o…

It's not "literally" stealing, because it doesn't deprive anyone of the use the source code. Those two points were somehow extremely obvious to everyone here as long as it was music and movies we were talking about.

And Github themselves have stated that only 0.1% of the Copilot output contains chunks taken verbatim from the learning set. Of those, the vast majority are likely to be boilerplate so generic it's silly to claim ownership, and maybe sometimes impossible to avoid.

Re: I do not agree with Github's use of copyrighted code as training for Copilot

#180

Post by voidnullnil »

yawaworht1978 wrote: post #18
orlovs wrote: post #6

Lets face, gitlab and github valuation is based on future “ai” code autogens. Brave new world

I cannot see them even throwing together a library. For example, how could they architect, let's say something like jQuery?

Coming up with this "return $this" pattern to emulate a composition operator seems like a very AI thing to do.
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