https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27771742
The above thread is a dupe of this discussion but with interesting discussions already in place before being marked as a dupe.
All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
61–70 of 734 posts
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#62I am not surprised given who the owner of GitHub is. Now, let's assume for a while that a private repo is left marked as public by mistake and Copilot regurgitates it... Lawyers are going to have fun with that one.
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#63Wouldn't this question already have been asked and answered when AI's were trained on books and articles?
As far as I know, there isn't a formal copyright-related US court ruling (yet anyway) of training ML/AIs on any media (except for copying the code of an ML). So everything is actually on thin ice, much like the infamous "GIFs [from snippets of shows etc.] are widely believed to be fair use", which in reality is still untested. Let's not forget other countries, with much stricter copyright rules (especially moral rights).
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#64Calling it “public” code feels like doublespeak. It’s most definitely NOT public domain code — it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable (but not copyable) by people. “Source available for viewing” is very different from “public property” as the phrase is commonly understood: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_property
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#65"All your code are belong to us" ... :(
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#66ML novice question: is this atypical when training models? Wasn't GPT-3 trained on a lot of copyrighted data? My gut instinct, which is based on very low-information, is that it would be pretty hard to train models if you could only use open-licensed material.
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#67Suppose you had some kind of AI Deepfake program operating off a large database of copyrighted photos and you asked it to "make a picture of a handsome man on a horse" and the man's head was an exact duplicate of George Clooney's head from a specific magazine cover, would that be infringement? Would selling the services of an AI that took copyrighted photos of celebrities and edited them into porn movies be infringem…
That would potentially be an infringement of the copyright of the photographer but in any case it’s an infringement of the personality rights of George Clooney.
You aren’t allowed to sell someone’s likeness without their permission. You don’t need an AI for this if you create a portrait of Clooney and sell it or make any use that isn’t covered by fair use he can sue you.
Depending on the composition of the picture for example if Clooney is naked and say Putin is riding in the “bitch seat” of the saddle then you also are quite likely be open for a libel suit as well.
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#68Out of curiosity, how do we define license violation in that case? I, as a human being, have trained by reading code, much of which is covered by licenses that are somehow not compatible with code I'm writing. Am I violating licenses? Asking seriously. It's really unclear to me where law and/or ethics put the boundaries. Also, I'd guess it's probably country dependent.
None of our laws were created under the assumption that computers would do so much of our jobs and effect so much of our lives. From robotic automation to social media to now computer programming. I think it’s really a mistake to ask what the letter of the law currently means in the evolving context. Laws should serve us and need to be adapted.
Who is "us" that are being served?
I'm not the biggest fan of copyright law as currently written, but I wouldn't say that MS's desire to file off the serial numbers on every piece of public code for their own profit is a good impetus to rewrite the law.
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#69The outrage-bait approach in this thread detracts from it. Yes, they trained it on everything. No, it's not clear if that's legal or not (probably is) or if that is much of a problem.
It's not outrage bait. The thing reproduces GPL licensed code verbatim.
Just a reminder: reproducing GPL licensed code verbatim is not illegal per see.
The legality lies on what the user does with the code.
Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot
#70This is why I relicensed my code [1] yesterday to a license I wrote [2], which is designed to poison the well for machine learning.
[1]: https://gavinhoward.com/2021/07/poisoning-github-copilot-and...