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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#311

Post by Fordec »

ummonk wrote: post #280
nmilo wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

If they hire photographers to take photos of people in public and use them for training, there’s no law stopping them really. Your only real hope would be to always walk around in a burqa.

There are laws covering that use case. It just depends on the country. Assuming your countries laws is the law everywhere is a bit of a fallacy.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#312

Post by hladder »

rockemsockem wrote: post #271
Tijdreiziger wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, what does the future where those materials are free use look like? You argue that desiring ownership of works that you created is “extremely emotional and cherry-picked”, but you do not provide a compelling argument why artists, photographers, and indeed programmers should be excluded from the conversation when it is their art, photography and code that is being appropriated in the first place .

I think that future has a lot of really cool and cheap tools that will help all those artists, photographers, programmers, etc get even more out of what they love doing. I think there will wind up being some job markets that shrink (not with the tech we have now though) for small-medium things in all of these fields (think logo design, stock photos, client libraries, simple out-of-the-box applications) and my hope is…

The job market for cheap rehashed garbage will grow and quality productions will suffer.

For programmers, the job market for loud-mouthed posers and plagiarizers will grow and quality will suffer. But those programmers will be fluent in marketing speak.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#313

Post by quickthrower2 »

smt88 wrote: post #78
19h wrote: post #52

I'd be rather saddened if Copilot was shut down or neutered because of a few vocal few protesting against it. It's been a massive productivity improvement to our senior devs, and I got so used to it that it's an annoyance when Copilot doesn't respond.

Copilot wouldn't be shut down or neutered because "a few vocal people" protested against it. It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus. You act like Microsoft is trying to do a public service and people are angry about it. The reality is that they're taking billions of hours of work and using it to build a product t…

They should in addition release all code generated as a combo of AGPL, GPL, MIT, etc. and put a comment on every usage. Users would then need to license their code accordingly.

For a commercial version, run it on Microsoft's internal code, the code they actually own!

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#314

Post by rockemsockem »

williamcotton wrote: post #193
klyrs wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "look I prompted CoPilot for this piece of code that I already knew about and it spit it right out" https://twitter.com/docsparse/status/1581461734665367554 An english description plus three characters of a function name is enough to coax CoPilot into distributing LGPL-licensed code out of context, without a proper license. That's neither "emotional" nor "cherry-picked", it's a clear-cut license violation.

Quoted post unavailable.

For what it's worth I've found the links you've provided very interesting and insightful! It's bringing back bits and pieces of some of the software license training I've got at various jobs in the past.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#316

Post by ummonk »

rockemsockem wrote: post #128

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…

You could still train your AI on, for example, Wikimedia Commons and simply add the required license to the output of your model.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#317

Post by P5fRxh5kUvp2th »

anon2020dot00 wrote: post #249
gspencley wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

A few snippets of code is not a product. If there was an open-source money-making product and someone builds a competing product using considerable help from CoPilot then that is a stronger case for damages then if someone just used some snippets of code in their own product. 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 obvio…

a few snippets of a book also isn't a product, and yet it can absolutely be infringing.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#318

Post by granzymes »

treis wrote: post #190
beachy wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

That might be true, if GiHub were a monopoly. But they are not.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#319

Post by Aeolun »

lbotos wrote: post #214
rockemsockem wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Even if it is a copyright violation, that is one out of, IDK, millions, maybe billions already of Copilot completions? If you, only once, steal lines of code that you don't have license to do so and use them to make money, that's the same exact thing. "Trusting the algo" and saying "whoops I'm sorry" doesn't make a strong legal defense. In a company of 1000 programmers, what are the odds that copilot increases the…

> what are the odds that copilot increases the risk of using improperly licensed code

In a company of a thousand programmers there are much easier ways to find improperly licensed code.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#320

Post by thedorkknight »

perrygeo wrote: post #256
wongarsu wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The less overt version of that is to figure out what mistakes copilot already makes (either things that are common in tutorials but not good in production, or things that are outdated, like hashing passwords with md5), and then systematically looking for software that includes such copilot suggestions.

Is there a technique to scan for software that includes copilot suggestions? Or is this just theoretical? Sounds impossible given MS/GH's monopoly on access to the model input data.

Probably not, but I can imagine something similar to hijacking a popular library and publishing a new version that opens a certain port and waits for instructions. All a malicious actor needs to do is increase the amount of exposed servers to be caught while they later scan the internet for anyone with that port open.
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