Copilot sells code other people wrote • Hacker News Board

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#141

Post by nl » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

galoisgirl wrote: post #20

capableweb wrote: post #5

If GitHub could guarantee that the code Copilot had ingested was only made with OSS licenses, then I don't see what the problem is. But as far as I understand, GitHub trained Copilot on any public repository on GitHub, meaning even if it doesn't have a license specified (so the user publishing it still has the copyright to it), then I don't see how it can be OK.

Here's an example: https://twitter.com/ChrisGr93091552/status/15397316329318031... > I checked if it had code I had written at my previous employer that has a license allowing its use only for free games and requiring attaching the license. yeah it does

That's a pretty bad example. He prompted it using the exact function header taken from the code he is complaining about.

It'd be much more interesting if he setup a function that was doing a similar thing but with different parameter types and names, and a different order of parameters (ie, like a real problem).

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#142

Post by dobin » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

antihero wrote: post #31

I mean, if it's autocompleting a fairly simple line, and can do that because it's analysed a lot of lines, I don't really see that as "stealing anything". If you are using it to write whole complex functions thatare the same as other people's, I guess that is copying. But if you do the second thing you are not a great dev, and would have probably ended up copy pasting it anyway. I think the first use case is far more…

I neither see it "stealing". The neuronal network was trained with code as input. It's creating code as output. The output has nothing to do with the input once it is trained. Do people dont know how neuronal network work?

It's like saying GPT-3 created text is copyright infringement, because some author used the same sentence in a book before.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#143

Post by jhugo » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

nl wrote: post #135

jhugo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on why you think a computer program and a person should be treated the same way in this respect? We can take as self-evident that a human is capable of reading about something, conceptualising it, and then writing something completely new with the knowledge they have gained. I think it's also pretty uncontroversial that the primitive "AI" we currently have is nowhere near the level of even an aver…

Copilot understands concepts as well as may humans. You can see primitive versions of this in the old Word2Vec demos showing how those models understand how London:England ~= Paris:France Copilot is much more sophisticated than that, and it no more copies code than a human does. It generates on a character by character basis given the contextual probability of the next character conditioned on the previous set of tok…

"it no more copies code than a human does" < that's a very big call right there, considering how much verbatim copying has already been documented in Copilot. The primitive understanding Copilot has of what it is generating doesn't even approach that of the most average programmers. It's classic AI: impressive on the surface.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#144

Post by simion314 » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:41 AM UTC

spupe wrote: post #78

jhugo wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you elaborate on why you think a computer program and a person should be treated the same way in this respect? We can take as self-evident that a human is capable of reading about something, conceptualising it, and then writing something completely new with the knowledge they have gained. I think it's also pretty uncontroversial that the primitive "AI" we currently have is nowhere near the level of even an aver…

I think it's best if we sidestep these big conceptual questions about what cognition or creativity really are. It's hard to find agreement, and perhaps it is not necessary to do so. My position is that if a person hired in a company can currently use Google, Stack Overflow and GitHub to help develop their custom scripts, and no moral or copyright issues are infringed (ie, you don't try to say you came up with it on y…

If I make a script and train it on Windows source code do you think MS will like it if I use that script on Wine ? I am sure MS will say the license did not allows it and your script transformations are not original, so GPL or similar license should be respected by Microsoft too.

>My position is that if a person hired in a company can currently use Google, Stack Overflow and GitHub to help develop their custom scripts, and no moral or copyright issues are infringed (ie, you don't try to say you came up with it on your own, and you use only enough that it is clearly fair use),

Only a judge will determine if it is actually free use, if you by change copied some super clever and unique code into your code base then I am sure a judge will not say it is fair use, copilot was proven it will do this(though MS said they put some IF-ELSE checks in the AI to prevent the plagiarism to be detected by removing obvious results and maybe obfuscating stuff more).

Maybe Stack Overflow license allows you to copy paste the answers in your code, but GitHub code has repo specific license that you need to respect.

If MS trained the model on all their private repos too and made the model free software then many would not have this issues. Or keep the model proprietary and train it only on the MS repors, BSD and similar licensed repos.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#145

Post by izacus » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:42 AM UTC

parhamn wrote: post #50

Pretty soon the world is going to come to realize art/creation is just blending, incrementing and repurposing prior art. No book, painting, codebase, sonnet, design is theft-less. The art is the space reduction, otherwise we’d just bruteforce away.

> Pretty soon the world is going to come to realize art/creation is just blending, incrementing and repurposing prior art

If that happens, the big copyright/IP conglomerates will immediately jump on that and make sure that laws are adjusted and they get their cut of every single word and line anyone puts near their smartphones ;)

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#146

Post by trention » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

spupe wrote: post #121

trention wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are saying that the AI should be treated the same way as a person would regarding its 'output'. I disagree. This is a conceptual disagreement and you cannot just sweep under the rug "what cognition or creativity really are". At the end, when in several (2-5) years we start seeing structural unemployment emerging because of AI deployments, this will be resolved by the legal system, most likely by some sort of part…

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 re…

I am not saying (in that last comment) what should happen, I am saying what will happen. Past automation in terms of impact is nothing compared to what's coming and people and lawmakers will react accordingly - not in favor of the automators.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#147

Post by redox99 » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

wolframhempel wrote: post #105

When my last company got acquired, part of the due diligence process was a scan of our codebase for snippets from stack overflow. Every snippet found that wasn't posted with a clear license by the author was challenged and we rewrote it. Now, I'm not entirely sure how necessary this was from a legal perspective. But introducing an AI into the mix will bring up a lot of uncertainty when it comes to how much change is…

Isn't all stack overflow content creative commons?

https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#148

Post by alkonaut » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

rob74 wrote: post #58

antihero wrote: post #31

I mean, if it's autocompleting a fairly simple line, and can do that because it's analysed a lot of lines, I don't really see that as "stealing anything". If you are using it to write whole complex functions thatare the same as other people's, I guess that is copying. But if you do the second thing you are not a great dev, and would have probably ended up copy pasting it anyway. I think the first use case is far more…

> But if you do the second thing you are not a great dev, and would have probably ended up copy pasting it anyway. If you do that on your own, it's your (legal) responsibility. If Copilot does it for you, it's GitHub's/Microsoft's responsibility.

> If Copilot does it for you, it's GitHub's/Microsoft's responsibility.

Is this true? It hasn't been tried yet I assume?

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#149

Post by kaibee » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:43 AM UTC

yaseer wrote: post #61

Technically, programmers search, copy and modify code all the time. One might argue copilot puts into software an algorithm that humans are already doing. Software like that is usually inevitable. Still, it sucks there's no benefit for the contributors. The most ethical thing I can think of is some kinda 'Spotify-like' revenue sharing model, based on how often their code is used by others. Not that they'd ever implem…

> The most ethical thing I can think of is some kinda 'Spotify-like' revenue sharing model, based on how often their code is used by others. Not that they'd ever implement that if they can get away with it!

Based on my understanding of how NNs work, I'm not sure its even possible to implement something like that.

Re: Copilot sells code other people wrote

#150

Post by Veen » Thu, Jun 23, 2022, 10:44 AM UTC

ajuc wrote: post #132

mihaic wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This type of argument always distracts from the fact that figuring out where we draw the line between theft and reimagining. The Magnificent Seven for instance was a reworking of Seven Samurai, but stands on its own as an original creation. Going into a cinema and filming a picture to later put on a torrent site is not artistic reworking. The hard discussion is about what is acceptable, we all know prior art exists.

> The hard discussion is about what is acceptable What if we just say "both"? Libraries were a thing for millenia and writers still wrote books. There are costs to IP laws and the benefits aren't obvious.

As a writer, the benefits are quite obvious to me.