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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)

#91

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.

Your strawmaning MS: pointing out a place where they don’t use their products doesn’t "prove" they don’t use it at all. They very probably use it somewhere else, and arbitrate that this particular functionality would be better served by "old school hard coded list", which also a very valable choice in many casses

> they don’t use it at all

I didn't intend to imply that, but I see how my wording was unclear.

I mean that LLMs don't appear to be up for these censorship-like tasks. The evidence being that a highly visible team using LLMs uses much older tech for a highly visible function. It's useful to know the limits of tech, especially novel tech, and this use case appears to be one.

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

#92
post #71

Seems to work again. But how does this happen in the first place. How could someone possibly have thought "hey I have an idea, let's put in a list of english words and just silently stop working if we have see even one of them in a substring". And people in this meeting would nod and say "yeah that sounds like an easy safety fix, let's do that". This just feels odd. This isn't a piece of forum software written by a 1…

Because it was a Manager idea and the person responsible for implementing was a H1B ?

I unironically think maybe you should maybe add some banned words to your own list

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

#93
post #72

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).

What do you use now? I'm bummed by Supermaven not working well anymore but haven't looked around again yet.

Same. I am back to Copilot sadly. I don't know that there are any other good alternatives for autocomplete (good as in: so much better than Copilot that it's worth switching to).

It feels like nobody's working to improve the autocomplete/copilot experience, everyone's focused on the "chat with the code and get AI to make all the changes for you" instead of "I know what I'm doing, just predict what I'm about to type and save me the effort of typing it out".

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

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems the trend with most LLM tech is once the users are there the model is quantized or downgraded down to the bare minimum level of usefulness either silently or through new versions that are just not better in real use.

Just a data point my experience with ChatGPT has only gotten better and better.

Newer models, yes. But newer versions of the same model seem to get much dumber over time.

That is to say, the release version of ChatGPT GPT4o seemed much better than the version today. This does not apply to the API.

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

#95
post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because it was a Manager idea and the person responsible for implementing was a H1B ?

I unironically think maybe you should maybe add some banned words to your own list

When a feature is both conceptually flawed and technically unworkable, the real question is why it still shipped. Engineers typically push back—unless job security concerns make silence the safer option...

And when the decision-maker can also steer the narrative...say...by mobilizing downvotes...The outcome is predictable. :-))

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

#96
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.

Not just that, but models that are “independently trained” by a community of people using some kind of distributed p2p method.

If this LLM stuff is as important as it is made out to be (and I think it is), it is absolutely crucial that it isn’t controlled by just a bunch of large corporations and tech oligarchs. A world where everybody needs LLM’s and the only source is from gigantic tech companies would be incredibly distopian.

Plus I seriously doubt the true innovation on these things will happen until the “little guy” can train and infer their own models. Right now these things are playing it way to safe. We should be reading articles about people using home built LLMs to do crazy shit that sticks it to “The Man”. That’s how transformative technology changes things. It challenges the status quo. The only “quo” that is being challenged right now is some boring mega tech company is peeing in some other mega tech company’s cheerios. Yawn. Wake me up when this technology threatens the entire fucking system (and not fake “AGI will take over all white collar jobs”… that is just corporate propaganda).

… I mean remember Napster and all those file sharing companies? Or the million iterations of Pirate Bay? Where is the LLM equivalent of that? Where is the “Linux” of LLM’s that freaks out all the tech companies? Or dark web of LLM’s that attract the eye of every three letter agency in the world? Where is the revolution? It’s just a bunch of huge tech companies safely jerking each other off wearing three layers of protection and their corporate lawyers on speed dial. How completely boring.

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

#98
post #79

Seems to work again. But how does this happen in the first place. How could someone possibly have thought "hey I have an idea, let's put in a list of english words and just silently stop working if we have see even one of them in a substring". And people in this meeting would nod and say "yeah that sounds like an easy safety fix, let's do that". This just feels odd. This isn't a piece of forum software written by a 1…

> But how does this happen in the first place Companies that are ironically filled with privileged people who "Gotta do something", since they, while sort-of well meaning, are sheltered and disconnected from actual social struggles in real life.

This reminds me of rental car companies deciding they should switch their vehicle fleets to electric.

A few months ago, I visited San Jose for a wedding. When I picked up my rental car at the airport, the only options were electric, even though I had specified that I wanted an ICE vehicle tat the time I made the reservation. During the four day trip I wound up visiting five different charging stations (some of which slow charged, so weren't able to replenish the battery in the time available), and I had to install three different apps. I still have like $20 of unused credit between them. I spent several hours waiting for the car to charge, not to mention making major detours looking for a fast-charging station. If I were to guess a part of the world you'd expect to find the best possible electric vehicle charging infrastructure, San Jose wouldn't be far off the mark. But my trip wound up being dominated by range anxiety.

I drive a PHEV (plug-in hybrid) for my commute from home to work and I love it. Electric is the future, and it's great that electric vehicles and charging stations are becoming more common. But renting an electric car in a strange city today is about the worst possible scenario for a short range vehicle. You don't know where the charging stations are, the charging stations require different apps, your hotel might not have a charger, and so on. The people making decisions at car rental companies should know this!

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

#99
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 you'll find that censorship is actually quite popular. The censors and censorship-hungry know the connotations of the word "censorship." Nobody will say it with their chest they believe censorship is a societal good straight up and make a robust case for it. It's all coy fuckery to lie to us and themselves that they're not censors.

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

#100
The real-word scenario that has happened to us was that it was completely misinterpreting words, for instance it stopped working because our file contained the word "retard", this was a localization file for the French translation where "retard" translate as "late", we needed to change the entire order of the file to avoid this problem and keep the auto-complete.

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/79223

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