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Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

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Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#51
post #3

Business opportunity to launch an LLM that specifically targets pr0n site developers.

Why porn site? I work on a medical application that among other things has a "Person" class which unsurprisingly has a "sex" field.

If I used copilot, it would prevent the doctors from recording the patient's sex?

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#53
post #17

I have a simple question. If censorship is considered evil regarding the written word and communications between humans, why do we want to then censor LLMs differently? It is either counterintuitive or simply a false concept we should abandon. Perhaps it is more about training, similar to how children are 'monsters' and need to be socialized/tamed.

I think that one difference is friction. Communication in the real world takes more effort to spread and has more limitations on the ability to scale that spread. E.g. it costs money to put up billboards and someone standing on a soapbox in the town square can only reach so many people. That friction provides greater opportunities for cooler heads to prevail and greater opportunities for people to counter questionable narratives.

It's somewhat similar to the laws some places have against providing free alcohol. Alcohol is still legal and abuse still happens. However, at least requiring people to spend money provides some friction to prevent things from escalating too much.

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#54
post #17

I have a simple question. If censorship is considered evil regarding the written word and communications between humans, why do we want to then censor LLMs differently? It is either counterintuitive or simply a false concept we should abandon. Perhaps it is more about training, similar to how children are 'monsters' and need to be socialized/tamed.

Government censorship and having policy on what employees/representatives of your companies say are two different things.

There are a lot of things I can say as a citizen that would get me fired from my job, or at least a talking-to by someone in management.

At the moment at least these LLMs are mainly hosted services branded by the companies that trained and/or operate them. Having a Microsoft-branded LLM say something that Microsoft as a corporation doesn't want said is something they will try to control.

That's also different from thinking that all LLMs should be censored. You can train or run your own with different priorities if you wish. It's like how there's a lot of media out there that you can consume or create yourself perfectly legally that isn't sold at Walmart.

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#56
This is really interesting. We have a company that claims to have an AI that can reason about text and that same company uses an old school hard coded censorship list. When a company doesn't use their own products, it usually tells you the product isn't up to the task.

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#57
One of the companies I worked with developed software for drug rehabs. Copilot would just constantly stop autocorrecting whenever I went into code files that mentioned anything to do with drugs (or sex - that's not a new censor!). It's the main reason I switched to Supermaven (before they got bought out and gave up on updating their extension).

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#58
post #17

I have a simple question. If censorship is considered evil regarding the written word and communications between humans, why do we want to then censor LLMs differently? It is either counterintuitive or simply a false concept we should abandon. Perhaps it is more about training, similar to how children are 'monsters' and need to be socialized/tamed.

> If censorship is considered evil regarding the written word and communications between humans, why do we want to then censor LLMs differently?

Simple: the people who are very pro free speech (i.e. "censorship is evil"), and the people who want to censor LLMs are distinct groups (though both groups are vocal).

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#59
post #17

I have a simple question. If censorship is considered evil regarding the written word and communications between humans, why do we want to then censor LLMs differently? It is either counterintuitive or simply a false concept we should abandon. Perhaps it is more about training, similar to how children are 'monsters' and need to be socialized/tamed.

Beyond even PR concerns (which you could, in principle, ignore as silly, though of course in practice they are a significant hurdle), you also need to consider that free speech even for people is not absolute. If an LLM responds to a child's query with sexually explicit content, that likely breaks the law, and the company is liable for that. Similarly, if an LLM generates libelous statements about a real person when prompted to describe that person, the company is liable. If an LLM starts generating medical advice or legal advice, that might break certain laws as well (though perhaps some reasonable disclaimers could fix this too).

Re: Copilot stops working on code that contains hardcoded banned words from GitHub (2023)

#60
post #28

I’m somewhat “rude” in my code comments and was tripped up by this last month… took me a while to figure out while on that specific file autocomplete would stop working https://bsky.app/profile/giorgio.azzinna.ro/post/3lecq3v5gts... Not to mention, there’s apparently some research saying code with swear words has higher quality, so if AI causes some decline there, we now know why it is https://www.reddit.com/r/progra…

This is why I can't wait to just move to local models for this stuff.
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