191–200 of 838 posts
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 v…
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This seems disingenous. People don’t have a problem that AI is being used in some form to provide the service. The complaint is pretty clearly that code is being lifted from repositories without attribution or compensation, and being redistributed into other applications. How impressive the work behind copilot is or is not really isn’t relevant.
This is how it always works, though. Moderna is standing on the shoulders of centuries of cumulative human knowledge without compensating all the sources of that knowledge. Musicians learn from other musicians and imitate to an extent, which is why all the musicians in a genre sound very similar, and we don't see present day rappers compensating the previous generation of rappers. This is where some modest taxation c…
Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…
That's likely the crux of the issue. If you do it right, you can steal from other people and get rich. Meanwhile, those same people (whose work was stolen) may be left out in the cold no matter how original, creative, hardworking etc they are.
Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…
I don't make Free software so that Microsoft can sell it to people for use in proprietary projects.
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As a writer, the benefits are quite obvious to me.
Benefits of what? Of copyright enforcement, or of sharing?
Sorry for the unproductive tone of this comment, but there's something about the attitude of this tweet that really grinds my gears. Any time someone invents something new and incredible, there's always a crowd of negative nancies eager to discredit and explain why the invention is nothing new and a detrement to society. I don't understand why someone would willingly share their code on github where it is publicly av…
Reselling other people's content like this without attribution (which, is a pretty mild form of payment) is not nice. But at least you now have one more reason in the list of reasons why Microsoft acquired Github: to be able to launder their open source contributions and resell them.
I don't understand what's going on there. I don't use github. Can someone explain what the author means? Edit: in detail
Nice, being downvoted for asking questions. Nice asshole culture on HN.
Your question seemed to lack this kind of work and was probably therefore downvoted.
I don't think that's so much about "asshole culture" but more like time management, as not everything can be explained to everybody in every topic.
You could think of the evolution of practical problem solving in software engineering like this:
1. I have to invent a solution (because nobody else in the world has a computer) 2. I have to know of a solution (education, word of mouth...) 3. I have to look up a solution in the books I have (commoditized knowledge) 4. I can look up solutions on the internet From 1 to 4 the amount of cleverness required to solve small problems drops a bit, but your productivity and exposure to knowledge probably goes up.
I'm not quite sure what happens from 4 to 5. Personally I'm actually more interested in the context solutions are presented in than just the solution. In fact, I rarely copy and paste code from the Internet, but I often look at multiple suggestions/solutions and then borrow ideas or combine ideas from several sources.
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…
That argument only works if you think what Copilot is doing is meaningfully similar to what humans are doing. The debate about how these models relate to human thought might have legal implications.
As I understand it (IANAL) copyright doesn't protect ideas and concepts. It protects the content itself. In theory, if I read some copyrighted work, understand some idea in it and then create a new work using that idea, without copying that original work, then that is not a derivative work. (I think this is at least how it's supposed to work - would love to be corrected if that's wrong.)
So if I took a copyright work and rot-13ed it before distributing copies, I think that would be clear copyright violation, but if I made my own works using concepts I gleaned from reading it, it wouldn't be.
So should Copilot be treated like the rot13 algorithm or like me understanding concepts and generating new works using them? That sounds like a fascinating legal debate to be had.
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…
When following the license terms, preserving the original copyright, etc, sure.
However, honest, ethical people (including programmers) do not plagiarize.
Copying and pasting code without attribution is plagiarism. Doing it without following the licensing terms is a copyright violation.