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Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

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Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#91

Post by falcolas »

visarga wrote: post #81
falcolas wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So that should make it easy to attribute, yes?

I think harder, as it is spammed around in all directions. It's easier to attribute a unique piece of code that appears in a single repo. But boilerplate functions don't deserve copyright protection as they are not creative. Can I copyright print('hello world!') if I post it in my repo? Do I deserve a citation from now on?

For better or worse, AI is a combination of machine learning algorithms. And these algorithms are black boxes solely because we don't add observability to them - we aren't looking.

But there is a desire to understand why an AI provided the output it did (to increase trust in AI generated output), and so there's a lot of study and work going into adding that observability. Once that's in place, it becomes pretty straightforward to identify which inputs to a model provided what outputs.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#92

Post by jacquesm »

belorn wrote: post #84

When Copilot was released the copyright discussion focused exclusively on code, but now we see very similar discussion around images with stable diffusion and the sister project unstable diffusion. When Copilot do reach the courts there will be some indication on how courts view author consent when it comes to training material. After that we might then see court cases for each form of media (images, video, text, sou…

In my opinion using all of the code on GitHub without respecting the licenses was a capital mistake. It should have been opt-in, maybe with some incentive but to just take it all without so much as a by-your-leave is not going to play well in court.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#93

Post by safety1st »

falcolas wrote: post #39
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’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens ... The “code” is the arrangement of those tokens, but that is determined by the weighting of the whole network This theory of operation is not borne out in reality. It's been clearly displayed that these tools are emitting verbatim copies of existing code (and its comments) in their input. It's even being seen in image generation, where NatGeo cover images…

Even if that theory of operation were true, it seems like an implementation detail that would be largely irrelevant in a court of law. Infringement is infringement regardless of how complicated your method for committing it was. If your AI reproduces a copyrighted work verbatim without permission, surely you are committing infringement? If you would be infringing by doing it via copy and paste, I would think a court would be likely to find that you infringed when you used an AI to do it. It does not matter that the algorithm on the backend is fancy...

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#94

Post by jacquesm »

keewee7 wrote: post #77

Why have so many of these AI models been trained on GPL licensed code? Almost half the controversy could have avoided by ignoring GPL code. I know that even non-copyleft licenses like the Apache and MIT licenses are copyrighted and require attribution however it would have caused far less controversy than training on GPL licensed code.

Yes, whoever signed off on that wasn't thinking clearly.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#95

Post by TchoBeer »

oehpr wrote: post #73
dbspin wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In a word scale. Scale matters. How is one locust different to a million? How is hand copying a manuscript (highly controlled in medieval Europe) different to a printing press. These models will and are already having a profound economic impact on the creative sectors they mimic. Whether existing law applies is a specialist question. But they're not remotely comparable from a pragmatic perspective with pieces manuall…

>A closer parallel would be the industrialisation of painting duplication But they directly reproduce the source material. AI art they clearly does not. The luddites seem a better parallel when it comes to scale. Where a machine comes along capable of producing in much higher quantities and in much greater efficiencies. Or perhaps photography? Also a fear of scale. For a long time photographers were not considered ar…

AI art they clearly does not.

It does not 1-1 recreate source material, but if we didn't have human artists anymore and replaced them all with the current stock of AI we would have no more developing art movements. It is wholly uncreative in a way that humans are not, and it does not understand what humans would find interesting, only what humans have already made. This makes it a pretty good tool for some amateurish applications or places where quality isn't important, but it is not a 1-1 copy of a human capable of making human art.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#96

Post by falcolas »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #85
visarga wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure you can do that? Because it is trivial to paraphrase code and text.

Sure. I’ve done it for Bel. (def no (x) (id x nil)) (def atom (x) (no (id (type x) ‘pair))) (def some (x f) (if (no x) nil (f (car x)) x (some (cdr x)))) (def all (x) (if (no x) t (f (car x)) (all (cdr x)) nil))) I don’t even have to pull up bel.bel to know that those are almost perfect replicas. I typed it on my iPad. EDIT: as far as I can tell, the only diff is that all comes before some. https://sep.yimg.com/ty/cd…

I'd wager that most folks would consider the code for some basic list operations to be a little different from outputting a complete specific implementation of a fast square root function with its exact constants, including the comments.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#97

Post by friesandties »

cyber_kinetist wrote: post #17
somrand0 wrote: post #2

ownership is a concept in dire need of revision

The only way to truly own something, is to either share it or destroy it.

I really like this, it rings so true to me in the current times. Temporal everything, air, food; a life even-keel.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#98

Post by TchoBeer »

claytongulick wrote: post #89
somrand0 wrote: post #2

ownership is a concept in dire need of revision

Agreed. You don't mind if I borrow your car do you? And your house? Let's not quibble about the particulars of me ever giving them back.

I don't want you taking my car because I need to use my car and only one of us can use it at a time. Intellectual property can be endlessly copied without anyone losing anything. This is not a defense of IP theft (and it's pretty reasonable to think that IP law serves an important purpose protecting creatives' ability to get compensated for their work) but it means that they require a fundamentally different approach.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#99

Post by somrand0 »

claytongulick wrote: post #80
breck wrote: post #59

Ideas cannot be owned. People can be owned, if you have slavery. Everyone must unlearn the term "Intellectual Property". These laws are anti-property rights. They are Intellectual Slavery laws ( https://breckyunits.com/an-unpopular-phrase.html ). The United States government employs more knowledge workers than all other companies (see NIH, DoD, CDC, NASA, NOAA, NWS, et cetera). Everything they produce is public domai…

People have a strange tendency to enjoy being rewarded for work they've done. I suspect that the folks who invest hundreds of millions of dollars into production costs for a movie, rather enjoy the ability to recoup those costs by restricting access to only those who are willing to pay for the privilege.

but what about people getting paid for the invested money of movies made by their ancestors, dead over 50 years ago (and up to more than 100 years ago, whatever is the current copyright term for movies)

do they have a right to enjoy being rewarded for work they didn't do but their ancestors did?

if the intention of those laws was to encourage creativity, how come they're stiffing it more than encouraging without any signs of any government trying to correct the laws to better match their purported intentions?

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#100

Post by Permit »

jacquesm wrote: post #92
belorn wrote: post #84

When Copilot was released the copyright discussion focused exclusively on code, but now we see very similar discussion around images with stable diffusion and the sister project unstable diffusion. When Copilot do reach the courts there will be some indication on how courts view author consent when it comes to training material. After that we might then see court cases for each form of media (images, video, text, sou…

In my opinion using all of the code on GitHub without respecting the licenses was a capital mistake. It should have been opt-in, maybe with some incentive but to just take it all without so much as a by-your-leave is not going to play well in court.

In my opinion it was covered under the GitHub terms of service and is clearly transformative. I am optimistic that the courts will find it so and we can put these debates to rest similar to how we’ve done for web scraping.
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