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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#321

Post by downrightmike »

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…

It creates a body of knowledge, everyone can use and can't be sued for since it would be the industry standard way to do things.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#322

Post by catiopatio »

spywaregorilla wrote: post #268
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.

Suppose you wanted to do what some code does, then you see this LGPL code. What can you do? Adjust variable names and play with line spacing and comments until it feels different?

> Suppose you wanted to do what some code does, then you see this LGPL code.

Suppose you want to express what some other writing does, and then you see that writing? What can you do?

(You write your ideas in your own words, and quote and cite your sources)

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#323

Post by batmanturkey »

ipaddr wrote: post #2

Doesn't really explain how co-pilot is stealing your community. I've used co-pilot and it works great until you are past boilerplate than it falls apart.

The license and attribution are stripped from regurgitated copied code snippets from code projects.

If the people don’t known which project the code was taken from, how can they one day contribute to that codebase?

If the code projects on GitHub are not getting the people who use their code at least aware of the project, that project disappears.

Copilot is an interloper who doesn’t even tell you which project the code snippet was ripped off from!!

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#324

Post by AmericanChopper »

batmanturkey wrote: post #308
AmericanChopper wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Luddite reaction to copilot is very hilarious to me. It seem to be a great way to identify low-talent coders, because who else would possibly feel so threatened by an AI?… Watching HN commenters suddenly become ardent defenders of copyright is quite the sight.

I see your statement as an inversion of consensus reality. What actual coder would use copilot? A beginner or dabbler. I predict your attempt at tactically “managing” this copilot scandal will not play well on HN to experienced coders, your Microsoft colleagues chiming in next claiming it boosts their productivity notwithstanding. Yes, I do indeed suggest astroturfing afoot.

I tried it out, but I don’t use it at all on a day-to-day basis. I have no idea if it boosts productivity or not. I also have no idea how you came up with the claim that it’s only for beginners, I’m presuming you just made this up? All of the people that I’ve noticed talking publicly about their experiences using it are highly experienced engineers.

I just think it’s hilarious how fair use is so widely supported on HN when it comes to music, or videos, or interface names, but all of a sudden is a moral crisis when it appears to threaten the value of HN member’s labor.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#325

Post by rockemsockem »

hladder wrote: post #312
rockemsockem wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In a world where the cost of producing cheap rehashed garbage approaches 0 why would the job market for cheap rehashed garbage grow at the expense of the expensive unique gems market?

There will definitely be more cheap rehashed garbage online and we will be forced to invent tools to wade through it. I actually look at that as a bright side because there's already a lot of cheap rehashed garbage, we just don't have good tools for wading through it yet because it hasn't become completely intolerable yet.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#326

Post by batmanturkey »

crispyambulance wrote: post #66
ipaddr wrote: post #2

Doesn't really explain how co-pilot is stealing your community. I've used co-pilot and it works great until you are past boilerplate than it falls apart.

They don't really explain in a satisfactory way how Copilot is "stealing communities" even though they themselves complain that Microsoft hasn't provided "solid legal references". Copilot is an AI stunt, an exploration, trying something new and exciting with very mixed and not-so-useful results. This lawsuit, however, is just lawyers doing what they do for fun. I guess the retained Microsoft lawyers love it too. Glad…

You are willfully ignoring thst the article absolutely DID address this point!

The license and attribution are stripped from regurgitated copied code snippets from code projects. If the people don’t known which project the code was taken from, how can they one day contribute to that codebase? If the code projects on GitHub are not getting the people who use their code at least aware of the project, that project disappears. Copilot is an interloper who doesn’t even tell you which project the code snippet was ripped off from!!

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#327

Post by Aeolun »

klyrs wrote: post #254
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…

> That sounds cherry-picked. Just because some high profile, highly-retweeted person says something doesn't make it not cherry picked. It's his code . This "high profile, highly-retweeted" crap is an appeal to emotion. He has a specific and legitimate interest in protecting his own intellectual property. It's not "cherry-picking" to report a crime being committed on your front lawn.

> It's not "cherry-picking" to report a crime being committed on your front lawn.

And as soon as he sees someone actually take the chair from his front lawn he can report it as a crime. He cannot report the people walking past because they could potentially steal his chair.

One could even argue that if he didn’t want his chair taken, maybe he should have locked it in his shed.

Of course, these chairs duplicate, so it’s not as if he loses his own chair.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#328

Post by [deleted] »

Ecco wrote: post #306
nonasktell wrote: post #301

Why would anyone want to stop Copilot is beyond me. Reinventing the wheel, millions of time a day, is an atrocity. Millions of (wo)man hours, wasted, every single day, on writing solutions to problems that have already been solved. There is a partial solution to this, and it's making people angry, it's crazy. If you put your code publicly on the internet, you should expect that people will reuse your code at some poi…

You’re missing the point. It’s not an ego problem: if you put your code on the internet with a license you should expect people to respect the license’s rules…

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#330

Post by wilg »

jen20 wrote: post #18
echelon wrote: post #7

BSD 5-Clause 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software…

The issue with copilot is that it is not respecting clause 1.

Only if you agree it is "redistributing" anything!

Small enough pieces of code can't be copyrighted. No one would support an argument that I violated copyright by using the code "else if {" from some GPL library.

So the question becomes what is the minimal unit of copyrightable code? What if you wrote a nice big function exactly (or almost exactly) the same way as someone else did? Whose copyright are you violating?

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