Copilot sells code other people wrote

I think I still have not understood your argument. Are you saying that you are afraid that AIs will become too powerful and cause unemployment, and therefore we should regulate them now before they do so?

Many people are worried about this, which is why there is a lot of debate about minimum income programs. However, at present, what Copilot is doing is similar to what Google does, and it is certainly not going to replace devs any time soon. Personally, I think we should exploit technology to its fullest, and the only reason we can have this conversation is because in the past, we haven't given too much consideration about the mailmen, secretaries, delivery workers and everyone else who got displaced by our use of the internet and similar technologies. We merely adapted to better exploit them.

This isn't how a language model works.

It's SO frustrating that even on HN people still fall for this naive and incorrect analysis. Pasting bits I've said before on this topic:

Language models do not work like this. They can copy content but usually that's for something like the GPL language text.

Generally they work on a character by character basis predicting what is the most likely character to appear next.

This very rarely results in copying text, and almost never rare text.

Mechanically it has learnt both syntax of language and how concepts relate. So when it starts generating it makes sentence that are syntactically valid but also make sense in terms of concepts.

That's really different to just combining bits of sentences, and it gives rise to abilities you wouldn't expect in something just cutting and pasting bits of sentences. For example, few shot learning is mostly driven by its conceptual understanding and can't be done by something with no way to relate concepts.

He talks about code, and Copilot works with code, so I'm not sure how it "applies to any".

If you mean that if you make a "random mashup of existing, copyrighted, hegerogenously licensed" works of art (audio/video), it also applies that you might be sued for it, then yes.

But that's not much of an issue with Copilot if you're using it for enteprise code that's already a mashup of copypaste "existing, copyrighted, hegerogenously licensed" and that you wont release and nobody will see anyway.

Whereas audio/video you generally want to release.

If you make them for your own consumption, then it's my response that rather applies: since nobody will see it, and you don't release/sell/circulate it, you can go ahead and mix Michael Jackson, Disney and Star Wars material - nothing will happen to you.

I'm not sure what do you mean by "theft-less" but I believe you might be conflating inspiration with derivative work: Copilot can produce verbatim copies of open-source code, this would make it more similar to how some musicians sample other people's music to create new music.

Not sure why I'm being downvoted here - I agree that this idea has been the same for most of history.

Your example of folk music is an odd one, for exactly that reason - it largely repurposes existing art. For example, Wagner wrote extensively about why we shouldn't respect folk music for this reason. I mostly disagree with him, but his comparison at least illuminates that this isn't so black and white. And that's really just scratching the surface of a complex topic.

I sense that if someone came along 2400 years ago with the exact play that Sophocles had just produced and claimed they had just composed it themselves, immediately after a public performance, someone would claim that theft had occurred. Do you disagree?