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Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

theregister.com

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Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#31

Post by samwillis »

buro9 wrote: post #21

This is Google, who have a monorepo, who are afraid of the legal risks to the monorepo. The copyright of the output of these tools is not yet determined, it's a risk. The advice not to use the tools in a risky way not only directly mitigates the risk but like an "employees must wash hands" sign in a restaurant restroom, it can be seen as a reasonable step that transfers some of the liability to the staff member. It's…

I doubt the fact they use a monorepo has any impact on this thinking. A versioned sourced repository is no different from a file server. If some "ai copyright infringed" code made it into the monorepo it doesn't compromise the whole thing. There are still clear distinct projects and products.

But exactly, this is a hygiene thing. Staff will still be using these tools anyway.

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#32

Post by Me1000 »

oxygen_crisis wrote: post #26
londons_explore wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I frequently use GPT-4's code. It is especially useful coding in a domain I'm not familiar with. I recently asked it to write a blender plugin to export certain polygons to a spreadsheet (with coordinates projected and transformed in certain ways), and it did admirably. I had never used blender before, and it would have taken me hours otherwise.

If you can't write the code yourself, you're not a good judge of how competent it is. If you admire any code that simply works at all when you don't know how it should be done, then your admiration isn't a measurement worth considering. Ask an LLM how to do something you already know very well how to do properly, only then can you see its flaws through its mindless bravado.

This doesn’t ring true for me. I have ChatGPT write code for me that I could write myself. I’ve had ChatGPT even rewrite code for me to make it more legible. It’s pretty good at it, especially when it comes to more popular languages.

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#33

Post by bPspGiJT8Y »

buro9 wrote: post #21

This is Google, who have a monorepo, who are afraid of the legal risks to the monorepo. The copyright of the output of these tools is not yet determined, it's a risk. The advice not to use the tools in a risky way not only directly mitigates the risk but like an "employees must wash hands" sign in a restaurant restroom, it can be seen as a reasonable step that transfers some of the liability to the staff member. It's…

> who are afraid of the legal risks to the monorepo

You're talking about a company which happily pays billions in fines because its just a fraction of what they otherwise manage to get away with. They're not at all afraid of doing a lot of illegal stuff, I find it highly unlikely they'd be afraid to step into a minor grey area.

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#34

Post by interroboink »

oxygen_crisis wrote: post #26
londons_explore wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. I frequently use GPT-4's code. It is especially useful coding in a domain I'm not familiar with. I recently asked it to write a blender plugin to export certain polygons to a spreadsheet (with coordinates projected and transformed in certain ways), and it did admirably. I had never used blender before, and it would have taken me hours otherwise.

If you can't write the code yourself, you're not a good judge of how competent it is. If you admire any code that simply works at all when you don't know how it should be done, then your admiration isn't a measurement worth considering. Ask an LLM how to do something you already know very well how to do properly, only then can you see its flaws through its mindless bravado.

On the other hand, somewhat in the style of NP-Completeness, it is often easier to verify that something is correct than it is to generate it from scratch. Even if I can't cook, I can say it's a tasty meal (:

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#35

Post by redbell »

> Cautioning its own workers not to directly use code generated by Bard undermines Google's claims its chatbot can help developers become more productive

The definitive definition of irony o_O

This reminds me of two pictures that were circulating on social media a while ago. The first was Zuckerberg holding a book while billions of people are wasting their time in endless scrolling in the Metas; the second was that Turkish chef known as Burak eating a healthy lite salad.

The bottom line is that we sell stuff that we are not convinced to consume.

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#36

Post by praptak »

samwillis wrote: post #31
buro9 wrote: post #21

This is Google, who have a monorepo, who are afraid of the legal risks to the monorepo. The copyright of the output of these tools is not yet determined, it's a risk. The advice not to use the tools in a risky way not only directly mitigates the risk but like an "employees must wash hands" sign in a restaurant restroom, it can be seen as a reasonable step that transfers some of the liability to the staff member. It's…

I doubt the fact they use a monorepo has any impact on this thinking. A versioned sourced repository is no different from a file server. If some "ai copyright infringed" code made it into the monorepo it doesn't compromise the whole thing. There are still clear distinct projects and products. But exactly, this is a hygiene thing. Staff will still be using these tools anyway.

I agree that monorepo does not make a fundamental difference. Still it makes it easier for some undesirable things to happen.

The tainted code can become a critical dependency. It can get copy-pasted elsewhere. An engineer could look at the code before writing their own (obviously not illegal per se but makes it harder to repeal bullshit claims later). An engineer can just write similar code and then have no way to prove they didn't look (ditto).

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#37

Post by [deleted] »

redbell wrote: post #35

> Cautioning its own workers not to directly use code generated by Bard undermines Google's claims its chatbot can help developers become more productive The definitive definition of irony o_O This reminds me of two pictures that were circulating on social media a while ago. The first was Zuckerberg holding a book while billions of people are wasting their time in endless scrolling in the Metas; the second was that T…

[deleted]

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#38

Post by TeMPOraL »

eyegor wrote: post #8
sedatk wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google Bard shamelessly tells my World War II stories[1]. Bing Chat refuses to answer such a question or says “no information” depending on its creativity level. [1] https://twitter.com/esesci/status/1669066574366646274

Although that's garbage for factual tasks, the creative writing behavior is a perfect fit for fleshing out dnd characters for example. On the other hand, Google is a search/ad company... I'd think they'd be the most interested in integrating search/facts into an llm. Hallucinating details about your customers is a good way to cause problems (some lawsuits already filed).

> On the other hand, Google is a search/ad company... I'd think they'd be the most interested in integrating search/facts into an llm.

At its core, an advertisement is made of two components: the subject - a store, a brand, a product, etc. - with which the victim is supposed to develop positive associations, ideally strong enough to motivate a purchase and/or advertising the subject to their acquaintances, and the message, which is meant to create those associations. Only the first part, the subject, has to be factual. The message does not, and in fact it usually isn't - manipulative bullshit performs much, much better, and generally the optimum for advertising seems to be asymptotically close to the line past which it would be legally fraud.

The only factual part, the subject, needs accurate handling, and is best suited for classical database systems - which is exactly how Google, and everyone else, is handling it. The message part - that's a good match to LLMs, which excel at producing convincingly sounding bullshit. For advertising, it seems what you need is to crank up the hallucinations a bit, but have some plausible deniability built into the whole system, so that when the LLM hallucinates in too obvious a way, no one can actually be held responsible.

Re: Google warns its own employees: Do not use code generated by Bard

#39

Post by plewd »

Me1000 wrote: post #32
oxygen_crisis wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you can't write the code yourself, you're not a good judge of how competent it is. If you admire any code that simply works at all when you don't know how it should be done, then your admiration isn't a measurement worth considering. Ask an LLM how to do something you already know very well how to do properly, only then can you see its flaws through its mindless bravado.

This doesn’t ring true for me. I have ChatGPT write code for me that I could write myself. I’ve had ChatGPT even rewrite code for me to make it more legible. It’s pretty good at it, especially when it comes to more popular languages.

>> If you can't write the code yourself

> that I could write myself

I don't think your comment is very relevant, given how they specified it.

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