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Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

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Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#21

Post by jkaplowitz »

hutzlibu wrote: post #14
randombits0 wrote: post #9

Code cannot be owned. A creative expression may be copyrighted. Purely functional expressions may not be copyrighted. The output of a trained AI is insufficiently creative to be copyrighted. Only humans can hold a copyright. Now with all that, there really isn’t anything here to get worked up over.

"Purely functional expressions may not be copyrighted." Is this more than a opinion? Because you can have whole programs as a long functional expression (not that I am a fan of such a coding style, but it exists).

It is an accurate statement of the law in the US, but "purely functional expression" is not used in the sense of a mathematical function. It basically means expressions that solely reflect the way you need to do the thing to accomplish the function you are trying to achieve, without any significant creative element.

For example, if I asked you to write Java code to print the sum of two integer variables named a and b, followed by a newline, you'd probably write pretty much exactly this:

System.out.println(a + b);

You might vary the spacing around the punctuation, or a few other unimportant details, but there's not much room for creativity there while still accomplishing the desired function. It isn't copyrightable.

And this is a good example of how the word functional means something non-mathematical here: that isn't even a functional expression in the mathematical sense, since there's no return value and the printing is a side effect. It's purely imperative.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#22

Post by c7b »

marc_io wrote: post #8
somrand0 wrote: post #2

ownership is a concept in dire need of revision

Yes, as long as it doesn't disregard the original creator's intentions in the formulation.

Even that notion is tricky in the context of text AI. It doesn't seem obviously clear to me what the implied stance towards AI training would be for many popular license types. It seems more like the creators of many licenses didn't explicitly consider this use case.

And the more meta question is whether the creators' rights should even extend to that realm. Can you specify in a license "This text must not be read by students in the context of an educational course" (which is arguably the closest analogue to AI training)? If that's not possible, then where do we draw the line between tools-assisted learning by humans and human tools learning on their own? You can arrive at answers, but it seems to me like there are many possible reasonable interpretations.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#23

Post by andybak »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #15
mellosouls wrote: post #12

I would have thought that in the vast majority of current AI-generated code we are talking about single blocks and functions that are just Intellisense on steroids that only a rather self-deluding coder would consider original enough or "theirs" to attribute authorship to. There are no doubt grey areas and more serious cases as the technology improves and the generated content increases in length and functional value…

I think that kind of depends on how common the snippet is. If it's code for swapping to variables, well everyone has written that and it's small. But what if it's a rarer thing like a new kind of debayering algorithm that takes a much larger "snippet" from a novel algorithm? As far as I'm aware there are no rigorous studies showing the level to which one could duplicate longer stretches of code and if it can do somet…

Algorithms aren't copyrightable as far as my understanding goes and this is where it gets murky. The expression is copyrightable, the algorithm isn't (except when it is...)

My personal feeling is that we've gone too far down the road of assigning IP to code and we should be rolling it back. I'd hate for the current AI boom to trigger an extension of current IP law.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#24

Post by monsieurbanana »

randombits0 wrote: post #9

Code cannot be owned. A creative expression may be copyrighted. Purely functional expressions may not be copyrighted. The output of a trained AI is insufficiently creative to be copyrighted. Only humans can hold a copyright. Now with all that, there really isn’t anything here to get worked up over.

I'd like to hear how you decide which piece of code is creative and which isn't.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#25

Post by fipar »

mellosouls wrote: post #12

I would have thought that in the vast majority of current AI-generated code we are talking about single blocks and functions that are just Intellisense on steroids that only a rather self-deluding coder would consider original enough or "theirs" to attribute authorship to. There are no doubt grey areas and more serious cases as the technology improves and the generated content increases in length and functional value…

I don’t disagree with you but I think there’s another angle to the discussion that involves the difference between the litigious capacity of corporations vs individuals to defend the simple kind of creations you describe, as I think corporations have defended (and even patented) very simple patterns before.

For what it’s worth, I wish the approach was as you describe but in all cases: make it impossible to defend attribution of basic building blocks regardless of how deep your pockets are.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#26

Post by Filligree »

wrs wrote: post #16

“…modify[ing] its AI model so that it traces attribution and gives credit to the original authors of the code, adding the associated copyright notices and license terms in the process…Biderman says is technologically feasible.” Is it really feasible? What does “traces attribution” even mean here? It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens that each were found throughout the input corpus. The “code” is…

It sounds like nonsense. The most plausible solution would be to provide credit to every single author whose code was used in the original training set; of course, that would run into gigabytes just for the credits.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#27

Post by andybak »

marc_io wrote: post #8
somrand0 wrote: post #2

ownership is a concept in dire need of revision

Yes, as long as it doesn't disregard the original creator's intentions in the formulation.

The original creator's intentions do not override IP law and neither should they.

Otherwise any deluded fool with extreme views on copyright could claim ownership way beyond that which the law currently offers.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#28

Post by ajsnigrutin »

wrs wrote: post #16

“…modify[ing] its AI model so that it traces attribution and gives credit to the original authors of the code, adding the associated copyright notices and license terms in the process…Biderman says is technologically feasible.” Is it really feasible? What does “traces attribution” even mean here? It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens that each were found throughout the input corpus. The “code” is…

Maybe like a science paper... 10 lines of code, 50 citations :)

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#29

Post by [deleted] »

Filligree wrote: post #26
wrs wrote: post #16

“…modify[ing] its AI model so that it traces attribution and gives credit to the original authors of the code, adding the associated copyright notices and license terms in the process…Biderman says is technologically feasible.” Is it really feasible? What does “traces attribution” even mean here? It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens that each were found throughout the input corpus. The “code” is…

It sounds like nonsense. The most plausible solution would be to provide credit to every single author whose code was used in the original training set; of course, that would run into gigabytes just for the credits.

[deleted]
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