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

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

#41

Post by praptak »

bPspGiJT8Y wrote: post #33
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.

The risk-reward balance is totally reverted. Profiteering from privacy breaches - big reward, fixed risk (the fines are basically capped). Using risky code - small reward (some worker time), big risk (suddenly everyone and their dog can sue you for bullshit copyright claims).

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

#42

Post by londons_explore »

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.

I tried asking it to write code to swap columns 1 and 3 of a CSV file, written in only x86 assembly. It refused, claiming that while it was theoretically possible, it would be stupid to do such a thing. It couldn't be persuaded...

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

#43

Post by lynx23 »

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…

Drug dealers have figured this out long ago. Never get high on your own stuff... No surprise this is the same with tech.

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

#45

Post by lyu07282 »

londons_explore wrote: post #24
lyu07282 wrote: post #23

But has anyone actually tried Bard for coding in practice? It's so awful, practically unusable. GPT4 feels several generations ahead of Bard.

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.

Yeah it has a pretty solid grip on the python API of blender, which is really surprising given how badly documented it is. There is even an addon now that integrates it directly in Blender:

https://twitter.com/rowancheung/status/1639702313186230272?

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

#46

Post by soultrees »

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…

This is less of a productivity risk than a legal risk. Nobody is denying that these tools enable productivity like we haven’t seen before, but google is afraid of outputting protected code while the courts haven’t fully decided the stance on things.

Imagine Google Bard outputs a piece of code for a major new feature, making them a shit ton of money. It’s then found out that code was actually taken copied, almost directly from average Joe’s hobby app, and now you’ve got a situation on your hands. Amazing for the average joe who’s expected to get a big pay day if the courts ruled in his favour but less so for the business owner.

Frankly, I can’t wait to see what happens when all copyright is out of the window. Obviously within reason, but wait until you see the innovation that comes about when the gates are open. The free-for-all of ideas is a fun time to live in that’s for sure.

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

#47

Post by soultrees »

JoshTriplett wrote: post #29
tsimionescu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI generated works are public domain That's not the status quo. The biggest concern is that AI can sometimes generate code from the training set verbatim, in which case that code has the copyright of the original training set - which might be GPL or proprietary or whatever else.

> The biggest concern is that AI can sometimes generate code from the training set verbatim Not just verbatim: AI-generated code is arguably a derivative work of code in the training set even if it doesn't generate verbatim copies of training data, in the same way that any code can be a derivative work even if it doesn't contain bitwise-identical lines. If you take a piece of Python code, and translate it to C code,…

Everything you do or know is a derivative of your own training set. True original thoughts without context don’t exist, well at least in any way we can find out as every human is the product of their own training set.

Just out curiosity, what makes the code you write, more original than an LLMs who’s training set is way bigger than yours and likely will more variance in how to achieve same goal.

I’m not trying to be facetious but rather stoke the philosophical idea of the reality that humans aren’t as special and unique as we think we are.

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

#48

Post by sofixa »

sedatk wrote: post #4
vsskanth wrote: post #3

Yeah Google Bard seems to make up stuff way more than chatgpt and gives just wrong code. I asked for numpy code to fit a polyline rejecting outliers and it just made up an argument "robust" for polyfit. Chatgpt on the other hand generated a function that calculated standard deviation and removed points outside two sigma.

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

Wow that's a lot of creativity - not only did it make up a bunch of information, that information doesn't even make sense within the well known and understood historical context of WW2 (Turkey was neutral so there is no scenario under which a Turkish soldier is "sent to the Eastern Front to fight the Soviet Union").

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

#49

Post by ilitirit »

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…

I asked Bard to suggest improvements to a SQL query I wrote. It suggested that I change my filter to improvement performance. The filter I had was:

   WHERE Column1  Column2
The suggested improvement:

   WHERE Column1  Column2
When I pointed out that it just gave me exactly the same code, it apologised and suggested this improvement instead:

   WHERE Column1 > Column2
I'm trying to understand how this helps me become more productive...

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

#50

Post by ec109685 »

vsskanth wrote: post #3

Yeah Google Bard seems to make up stuff way more than chatgpt and gives just wrong code. I asked for numpy code to fit a polyline rejecting outliers and it just made up an argument "robust" for polyfit. Chatgpt on the other hand generated a function that calculated standard deviation and removed points outside two sigma.

Here’s an example where Bard is making up studies to support RFK’s thesis that drinking water causes transgenderism: https://twitter.com/EbenThurston/status/1670619027608092674?...

It’s flat out lying, yet folks are using its output in arguments.

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