241–250 of 1001 posts
It's a common advice to not read software patents[1] because the infringement penalties are lower if you did so unwittingly, that is, by reinventing the patented technique yourself.
I wonder if using Copilot doesn't push the penalties back again to wilful infringement. Or worse, patent trolls poisoning the training data with patented algorithms.
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I mean, he clearly knew about that code in advance and used his prior knowledge to coax Copilot into spitting it out, yeah? Three characters can get you pretty far, that's 1 combination out of 125,580 (considering all english letters, upper and lower, along with most of the numbers and symbols on my keyboard), plus the description of a fairly complex algorithm. Also, this code is really just executing a mathematical…
Of course it is cherry picked. The idea is that it allows you to INTENTIONALLY void any copyright you want. So let's say I obtain an illegal copy of microsoft windows' source code. Under this precedent, what stops me from just (overfitting) training a neural network to produce the source code verbatim, sans any license notice? But it doesn't end there. What stops me from making a neural network that exactly reproduce…
What do people think the future looks like where publicly available resources on the Internet (art, code, etc) aren't fair use for training ML models? Where you have to opt into models or can opt out (and many wind up doing so)? OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, et al will STILL train such models that can do all the same things, but it will be much harder for non-industry-backed individuals to navigate the legal minefield w…
> What do people think the future looks like where publicly available resources on the Internet (art, code, etc) aren't fair use for training ML models? A better future to me. I don't want pictures of my face training ML models, nor do I want my art, or my code. I don't want my face to be more recognizable to AI, and I don't want my work to contribute to the consolidation of power to a few big firms. And for what, wh…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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> If the code was covered by license in the first place the comment you're replying to stated that it was covered by the LGPL.
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Yes, I know that comments are expressive. They are clearly not utilitarian.
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Github does plenty of stuff that you can't do. e.g. the contributions graph as just one example that comes to mind. That's not unfair, and not the basis for a lawsuit, it's just business. > Copilot is not only making money off of open-source, they are making money off of open-source in a way others can't. Of course! That's why MS paid squillions to buy Github.
You're not supposed to be able to use dominance in one market (git hosting) to gain dominance in another (AI powered code suggestions).
The latter is obviously a violation of copyright, full stop.
The former, to me, is obviously not a violation. If it were, that would massively tilt the playing field in favor of large corporations. It would become very hard to independently train your own models. Philosophically, I go by the principle that if it's (il)legal to do yourself, then it should be (il)legal to do the same thing with an AI's assistance.
The massive complicating factor is that nobody knows how to do (1) without also doing (2) as a side effect, because we don't understand how deep learning works well enough to control it.
What's with the default to "if it's not explicitly legal, it must be illegal"? Imagine if every new piece of software your wrote had to be tested for legality because you don't know that it's explicitly legal. Oh there aren't laws for this new thing, so I guess you should challenge yourself all the way to the supreme court? I get the author not liking Copilot, but I don't see that GitHub/Microsoft have any kind of ob…
> What's with the default to "if it's not explicitly legal, it must be illegal"? That's not how I interpret what's happening. People who produce things have rights over their products. Be it artists, craftsmen, inventors, entrepreneurs or coders. There is a legitimate question here as to whether CoPilot has infringed upon those rights. I don't see it being about "making something illegal." I see it about answering a…
But at that point, it would be just like someone cloning the Github code without following the license and in that case, it should become obvious that there is a clear violation harming the creators. But in most use cases of CoPilot, where-in people are just using it to build their own product, I doubt there is a cause for damages.
The potential legal issues are there, but that's not why Copilot should die.
Copilot should die for any (or a combination of all) these reasons (and more which I don't mention):
- the operator has to already understand the emitted code to be able to determine if it is what is needed, or to modify it if it is close but not quite right
- the operator may have a false sense of capability, leading to bugs and other problems that would appear later (in production?)
- wrong suggestions are a distraction from the careful mental structures which one maintains while writing software
- any problem that Copilot can solve with guaranteed correctness is probably trivial or already met by a (battle tested) library
Forgive the analogy, but effective automated code generation is like autonomous driving systems. Anything less than 100% accuracy is a risk, and in these examples risk of incorrect behavior is not acceptable.
Copilot seems like a pointy-haired boss fantasy where they can hire only junior programmers and expect successful software products.