Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed • Hacker News Board

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#201

Post by carapace » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 4:05 PM UTC

claytongulick wrote: post #197

carapace wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You don't mind if I borrow your car do you? ZipCar, et. al. > And your house? AirBnB > Let's not quibble about the particulars of me ever giving them back. Symmetry.

Historically rent-seeking has been a negative for the health of society. Granting overlords the power of ownership, reducing individuals to renters that must comply with the whims of the property masters, is not a path to increased liberty.

> Historically rent-seeking has been a negative for the health of society.

Sure. I mean, I'm not an economist nor a sociologist, I bet there's some nuance to that, eh?

> Granting overlords the power of ownership, reducing individuals to renters that must comply with the whims of the property masters

Peasants and serfs. In re: technology I talk about Morlocks and Eloi. Yeah I think that's a lousy way to structure society.

The original point that you replied to was, "ownership is a concept in dire need of revision" and it sounds to me like that's where you're coming from too?

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#202

Post by jacquesm » Sat, Dec 31, 2022, 10:16 PM UTC

system2 wrote: post #189

jacquesm wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the problem though. The onus would be on you to prove that your machine generated the output and that it wasn't based on the training data but just on your input. Otherwise the generated work isn't yours.

That's the moral aspect of the problem. First thing that I am concerned is that the search engines will be flooded by the bots creating ai content and engines won't have a way to identify it.

Sure, but that's not a copyright issue, that's just the problem of the web in general: by measuring something (ranking the importance of a page) you've introduced an element that can be gamed and whatever means people can use to game it they will use.

But copyright is an entirely different kettle of fish and it is very well possible that Microsoft/GitHub will be able to do an end run around copyright but I don't think they've really thought through what the consequences of that will be. Essentially they are saying 'if you have access to a bunch of source code you are free to slap new terms and conditions on the hosting of that code and then you can use it to train your models, even without active consent of the copyright holders'. In that world Microsoft stands a lot to lose. Much more than your average GitHub repository owner. So this was a terrible mistake on their part.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#203

Post by joshspankit » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 11:51 AM UTC

joshspankit wrote: post #193

I’m horrified. I know we’re “just” talking about code here but decisions will be far-reaching and if we let the powers that be force AI-generated content to be copyright-attributed, two things are going to happen: 1. The biggest benefits of AI are going to be pushed back for decades and possibly indefinitely 2. Artists will be absolutely slaughtered as the same rules will come at them full-force. Almost every artist…

As well, this:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34242124

If AI can produce patentable and copyrightable proteins, the first pharmaceutical company to press a button will own all possible proteins. And then all possible permutations of every undiscovered drug.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#204

Post by randombits0 » Wed, Jan 04, 2023, 5:04 PM UTC

monsieurbanana wrote: post #198

andybak wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's for a court of law to decide. GP was merely stating (what sounds like a fairly accurate) description of how copyright on code currently works in most jurisdictions.

GP was stating that AI couldn't own copyright because it wasn't creative enough. Now you're telling me (and I agree) that whether it's creative enough is up to a court of law to decide. Feels like we're agreeing then, and disagreeing with GP?

AI can’t own copyright because only humans can get copyrights.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#205

Post by Thews » Thu, Jan 05, 2023, 12:29 AM UTC

dspillett wrote: post #141

Thews wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does copilot reduce the incentive to publish free code?

Depends how you define free. If an AI being inspired by GPL code that happened to be in its training data because someone other than the creator stuck it in a repo on GitHub is just fine, and if some code produced as a result is practically identical that is fine too, and the resulting code is not considered GPL any more, then the GPL and licences like it are worthless. The only two designations that mean anything at…

I have learned from a lot of commercial code. It doesn't mean I can't also write "free" code.

I find most things in all code to be generic and obvious. The same functions are used by lots of other software with just different names that there's nothing novel.

After you've learned to classify lots of functions with big O notation, you will end up writing things in an obvious way for a base-level optimization that fits naturally.