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

theregister.com

141–150 of 166 posts

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

#141
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…

Could it also be a reflection of Google's lawyers advising that using LLMs trained on masses of unvetted source-available code is probably tantamount to copyright laundering?

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

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He said he put code in

Can you quote where he said he fed it internal code?

*in violation of policy.

That wasn't said, but the goalpost keeps moving in this thread.

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

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the comparison with "employees must wash hands" signs is apt. Should we see legal action against large language model of questionable heritage produced code, the consequences will be dire for companies . Being able to say to their (probably then ex-) employees "I told you so" will gain them nothing. There will not be nearly enough to get from the breaching ex-employee to compensate for any damages.

> Should we see legal action against large language model of questionable heritage produced code, the consequences will be dire for companies. I think we're already past the point of no return. Almost every active codebase in the world (at least the JS part of it) has been tainted by LLM generated code at this point if dependencies count. If courts decided the output of LLMs trained on GPL code was subject to GPL, al…

[deleted]

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

#144
post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dire…

> Obviously within reason Oh, so you don't really mean "when all copyright is out of the window", I guess. So.... how are we going to define "within reason"?

I don’t know how to answer this other than I’m not smart enough to know what the solution is. The ‘within reason’ is simply to appease any unknowns that I’m not accounting for when I say we should just open the flood gates.

What that looks like, who knows.

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

#145
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That’s not legally true. I don’t even think it’s factually true.

Are you sure? If it was established that LLMs were illegal I think people would know

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

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Someone wrote the first murder mystery. It wasn't something we inherited from amoebas. Someone wrote the first Regency romance. In fact, we know who it was - Georgette Heyer. Someone invented calculus. We didn't get that passed down from the cave men via oral history…

LLMs can sometimes come up with original things as well. Also even the people who invented new things like that took some inspiration or knowledge from things that exist

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

#147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dire…

based on the code I've seen come out of these tools, I'm denying they enable any productivity gains. The code is either hilariously bad, filled with subtle bugs, or just something I could have googled then copy and pasted an OSS solution into my code. Is anyone's productivity really higher if we have to spend all our time correctness checking the output?

We should test it and your ego at the same time. We might find some interesting results.

Find someone at the same level of competency as you, set a goal, that person gets access to any LLM they want, you have to do it with no assistance other than reading stack or googling. And if you think your ego can handle it, find someone who you know is below you in competency (but not junior) and set the same goal and see if they surpass your own productivity or progress.

We’d have to set up some controls but you see where I’m getting at. It would be an interesting experiment either way.

It’s all in how you use the tools. If you’re zero shotting and hoping for the best then yeah, not great. But that’s where your domain expertise is supposed to come in.

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

#148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Someone wrote the first murder mystery. It wasn't something we inherited from amoebas. Someone wrote the first Regency romance. In fact, we know who it was - Georgette Heyer. Someone invented calculus. We didn't get that passed down from the cave men via oral history…

I’m not denying those achievements of those individuals at all. But I am saying that those individuals didn’t invent or discover those ideas out of the blue. There was information gathered up until that point in their lives that allowed them to make those connections and form ideas from there. No idea exists in a vacuum, yes someone needs to be the first to do anything, but all knowledge is passed on.

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

#149
post #39
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I was replying to the second part of it.

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

#150
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You are agreeing with OP. You could evaluate the quality of ChatGPT because you could write the code yourself.

I'm disagreeing with the second part of OPs comment.
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