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GitHub Copilot is generally available

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271–280 of 796 posts

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

copilot also got its training sets for free and not really with any kind of consent from the owners of that code, and it's really quite ambiguous as to if what it's doing violates many different open source licenses of its training data Microsoft is selling AI services based on training data they don't own and didn't acquire rights to, nobody writing the licenses of the code it's using had the opportunity to address…

You need to require rights for scraping publicly available resources? Damn, rip Google.

No, it was published to be read.

It was not published to be freely reproduced without adhering to licenses, etc.

You don't need to acquire rights to read a newspaper (other than say, paying a dollar), you do need rights to copy articles and sell them.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#273
Does it replace programmers?

No.

Is it particularly smart?

Also, no.

But it really speeds up all the dumb stuff in coding. Especially UI code can be very chatty, and Copilot is a nice assitance here.

Also, it would be cool if it was part of GitHub Pro, which I'm already paying for, haha.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#274
post #92

I've been using Copilot for a while now. I'm lucky that I don't have to pay moving forward but I would totally pay $10/mo for this. When writing tests, this thing works so well that it saves me 10-20% time writing code so $10 is nothing.

> I'm lucky that I don't have to pay moving forward but I would totally pay $10/mo for this. How? I was in beta but looks like I'm kicked out. I also verified my student status but get prompted to pay. Are you a maintainer? Have you verified that you have access?

I am not sure the exact logistics of access (I’m also a student so I will probably look into trying to get access when I have a chance), but in the blog post with the original announcement > It will also be free to use for verified students

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#275
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if you made DALL-E and it just remixes images sourced from a broad scan of the Internet, filtered through several layers of machine learning indirection, you're all good.

Sure, if it's remixed to the point where most people don't go "hey that's Big Bird!" CoPilot doesn't, or at least doesn't always, like when it just copied Quake's fast inverse square code with the verbatim comments including profanity. Using CoPilot to create commercial code opens the coder to significant liability if there's enough money at stake.

Just argue that you subcontracted that code to Microsoft in good faith for $10/month and pass on the lawsuit to them.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#276

Did they fixed the licensing dangers?

As they don't mention it I doubt it.

Tabnine, a similar competitor, explicitly mentions this on their website:

" Tabnine only uses open-source code with permissive licenses for our Public Code trained AI model (MIT, Apache 2.0, BSD-2-Clause, BSD-3-Clause). "

Other commenters here say the completion quality is worse than Copilot. I use Tabnine for local short completions only and am quite happy with it. Didn't try Copilot yet.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#277

My unpopular take: most comments here are super entitled. To paraphrase: "sure it's minblowing and the biggest productivity gain in years, but I want it FREE". Yes. You got used to it being free. And now it's not. But $10/mo is a steal. It's more than fair and far, far less than they could get. And no. They don't owe you anything. In fact, they probably host your code (often free), and less directly provide your IDE…

> To paraphrase: "sure it's minblowing and the biggest productivity gain in years, but I want it FREE".

That's not how I would paraphrase most of the comments here. At least the ones I'm seeing are closer to: "it's really neat as far as free demos go, but ultimately is not that useful and not worth paying for."

My current prediction is that this coming recession and the increasing cost of money is going to lead directly to a new AI winter. This almost goes without saying for the mountains of useless ML projects being churned out by DS teams in companies big and small. However, even for this very expensive well staffed projects, there's still a gap between amazing demo and game changing product that none of the recent AI projects have been able to close. After billions poured into these demos, in the past 10 years very little of daily life has been impacted by AI and in 10 more years even less will since companies will stop forcing useless AI projects on customers.

As someone with a lot of experience in ML/DS, I would recommend everyone in this field start thinking about how to reimagine your resume for something else. There's going to be a massive contraction in this space once the cheap money starts flowing.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#278
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. The only reason it hasn't been utterly dogpiled by lawyers is that far fewer people care about code than other forms of IP. If I made an AI assistant called PhotoStar to help with digital art and it just attaches Big Bird's face onto a character in my children's book I'm going to get sued. "Hey now, I just hit paste , the software pressed copy by itself" is not going to hold up.

Or the fact that you grant GitHub an implicit license as outlined in the ToS.

GitHub isn't liable. That's been established in court with regards to training AIs. Who is liable is you who may or may not have the legal right to use the code CoPilot spits out for you.

Re: GitHub Copilot is generally available

#280
post #3

What's the criteria for being considered "a maintainer of a popular open source project"? They never actually publish the criteria anywhere from what I can tell. They just say visit the subscription page and if you are eligible it should be available to you and if you see a charge then you are not eligible. I think though they should still be transparent about what their metric is for determining popular projects on…

> People who maintain popular open source projects receive a credit to have 12 months of GitHub Copilot access for free. A maintainer of a popular open source project is defined as someone who has write or admin access to one or more of the most popular open source projects on GitHub https://github.com/pricing#i-work-on-open-source-projects-ca... I like how "open source project" == "on github". Can't say that I am su…

I authored/contribute/maintain stuff that is used by tens of millions of people world wide. I do not qualify. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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