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AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

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Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#341

Post by j4coh »

raggi wrote: post #328
j4coh wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So if you can get an LLM to produce music lyrics, for example, or sections from a book, those would be considered novel works given the encoding as well?

"an LLM" could imply an LLM of any size, for sufficiently small or focused training sets an LLM may not be transformative. There is some scale at which the volume and diversity of training data and intricacy of abstraction moves away from something you could reasonably consider solely memorization - there's a separate issue of reproduction though. "novel" here depends on what you mean. Could an LLM produce output tha…

By novel, I mean if I ask a model to write some lyrics or code and it produces pre-existing code or lyrics, is it novel and legally safe to use because the pre-existing code or lyrics aren’t precisely encoded in a large enough model, and therefore legally not a reproduction just coincidentally identical.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#342

Post by raggi »

aspenmayer wrote: post #327
raggi wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US you can not generate copyrightable IP without substantial human contribution to the process. https://www.copyright.gov/ai/Copyright-and-Artificial-Intell...

Tell that to Reddit. They’re AI translating user posts and serving it up as separate Google search results. I don’t remember if Reddit claims copyright on user-submitted content, or on its AI translations, but I don’t think Reddit is paying ad share like X is, either, so it kind of doesn’t matter to the user, as they’re (still) not getting paid, even as Reddit collects money for every ad shown/clicked. Even if OP did…

reddit is a user hostile company, have been forever, always will be. they take rights over your content, farm things about you, sell data, do invasive things in the mobile apps, use creepware cookies, etc.

Excerpt from the user agreement:

    When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, copy, modify, adapt, prepare derivative works of, distribute, store, perform, and display Your Content and any name, username, voice, or likeness provided in connection with Your Content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed anywhere in the world. This license includes the right for us to make Your Content available for syndication, broadcast, distribution, or publication by other companies, organizations, or individuals who partner with Reddit. For example, this license includes the right to use Your Content to train AI and machine learning models, as further described in our Public Content Policy. You also agree that we may remove metadata associated with Your Content, and you irrevocably waive any claims and assertions of moral rights or attribution with respect to Your Content.
People put their heads in the sand over reddit for some reason, but it's worse than FAANG.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#343

Post by aspenmayer »

raggi wrote: post #342
aspenmayer wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Reddit. They’re AI translating user posts and serving it up as separate Google search results. I don’t remember if Reddit claims copyright on user-submitted content, or on its AI translations, but I don’t think Reddit is paying ad share like X is, either, so it kind of doesn’t matter to the user, as they’re (still) not getting paid, even as Reddit collects money for every ad shown/clicked. Even if OP did…

reddit is a user hostile company, have been forever, always will be. they take rights over your content, farm things about you, sell data, do invasive things in the mobile apps, use creepware cookies, etc. Excerpt from the user agreement: When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable licens…

To a certain reading, this is user-centric: it’s increasing the size of the audience pool beyond that of shared language speakers and readers to the entire literate human race. This is an important point to acknowledge, because every silver lining has its cloud.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#344

Post by LegionMammal978 »

raggi wrote: post #342
aspenmayer wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to Reddit. They’re AI translating user posts and serving it up as separate Google search results. I don’t remember if Reddit claims copyright on user-submitted content, or on its AI translations, but I don’t think Reddit is paying ad share like X is, either, so it kind of doesn’t matter to the user, as they’re (still) not getting paid, even as Reddit collects money for every ad shown/clicked. Even if OP did…

reddit is a user hostile company, have been forever, always will be. they take rights over your content, farm things about you, sell data, do invasive things in the mobile apps, use creepware cookies, etc. Excerpt from the user agreement: When Your Content is created with or submitted to the Services, you grant us a worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable, and sublicensable licens…

  With respect to the content or other materials you upload through the Site or share with other users or recipients (collectively, “User Content”), you represent and warrant that you own all right, title and interest in and to such User Content, including, without limitation, all copyrights and rights of publicity contained therein. With respect to the content or other materials you upload through the Site or share with other users or recipients (collectively, “User Content”), you represent and warrant that you own all right, title and interest in and to such User Content, including, without limitation, all copyrights and rights of publicity contained therein. By uploading any User Content you hereby grant and will grant Y Combinator and its affiliated companies a nonexclusive, worldwide, royalty free, fully paid up, transferable, sublicensable, perpetual, irrevocable license to copy, display, upload, perform, distribute, store, modify and otherwise use your User Content for any Y Combinator-related purpose in any form, medium or technology now known or later developed.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#345

Post by raggi »

j4coh wrote: post #341
raggi wrote: post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"an LLM" could imply an LLM of any size, for sufficiently small or focused training sets an LLM may not be transformative. There is some scale at which the volume and diversity of training data and intricacy of abstraction moves away from something you could reasonably consider solely memorization - there's a separate issue of reproduction though. "novel" here depends on what you mean. Could an LLM produce output tha…

By novel, I mean if I ask a model to write some lyrics or code and it produces pre-existing code or lyrics, is it novel and legally safe to use because the pre-existing code or lyrics aren’t precisely encoded in a large enough model, and therefore legally not a reproduction just coincidentally identical.

No. I don't think "novelty" would be relevant in such a case. How much risk you have depends on many factors, including what you mean by "use". If you mean sell, and you're successful, you're at risk. That would be true even if it's not the same as other content but just similar. Copyright provides little to no protection from legal costs if someone is motivated to bring a case at you.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#346

Post by tovej »

ants_everywhere wrote: post #262
jakelazaroff wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This would be the first time ever that an LLM has discovered new knowledge, but the far reach is that the information does appear in the training data?

They've been doing it for a while. Gemini has also discovered new math and new algorithms. There is an entire research field of scientific discovery using LLMs together with sub-disciplines for the various specialization. LLMs routinely discover new things.

Citation needed, and I call bullshit. Unless you mean that they hallucinate useless algorithms that do not work, which they do.

LLMs do not have an internal model for manipulating mathematical objects. They cannot, by design, come up with new algorithms unless they are very nearly the same as some other algorithm. I'm a computer science researcher and have not heard of a single algorithm created by LLM.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#347

Post by nullc »

pixl97 wrote: post #138
voxl wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except you can enforce this rule some of the time. People discover that AI was used or suspect it all the time, and people admit to it after some pressure all the time. Not every time, but sometimes. The threat of being caught isn't meaningless. You can decide not to play in someone else's walled garden if you want but the least you can do is respect their rules, bare minimum of human decency.

Except the other way happens too. You get someone that didn't use AI getting accused of using AI and eventually telling people to screw off and contributing nothing.

If their work was difficult to distinguish from AI then that sounds like a win too.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#348

Post by ipaddr »

BobbyTables2 wrote: post #290
ineedasername wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative. There’s lots of details to figure, but the genie is out of the bottle. Sure it’s a big hill to climb in rethinking IP laws to align with a societal desire that generating IP continue to be a viable economic work product, but that is what’s necessary.

I’m curious … So “transformative” is not necessarily “derivative”? Seems to me the training of AI is not radically different than compression algorithms building up a dictionary and compressing data. Yet nobody calls JPEG compression “transformative”. Could one do lossy compression over billions of copyrighted images to “train” a dictionary?

A compression algorithm doesn't transform the data it stores it in a different format. Storing a story in a txt file vs word file doesn't transform the data.

An llm is looking at the shape of words and ideas over scale and using that to provide answers.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#349

Post by nullc »

potsandpans wrote: post #318
hombre_fatal wrote: post #310

I see two things here. 1. The world has fundamentally changed due to LLMs. You don't know where a code submission falls between "written thoroughly with eternal vigilance" vs "completely vibe-coded" since it's now trivially to generate the later. There's no going back. And a lot of comments here seem stuck on this point. 2. The maintainer naively or stubbornly imagines that he can get everyone to pre-sort their code…

In a nondismissive way, I see things like this (the gh issue) as part of the reactionary movement / counter culture of our time. People want to feel agency and will react to mainstream pressures. And make up whatever excuses along the way to justify what theyre feeling.

I don't think it has anything to do with being a reactionary movement or counter culture. If it were I would expect, among other things, that it would absolutely prohibit the use of AI entirely rather than just require disclosure.

The background is that many higher profile open source projects are getting deluged by low quality AI slop "contributions", not just crappy code but when you ask questions about it you sometimes get an argumentative chatbot lying to you about what the PR does.

And this latest turn has happened on top of other trends in 'social' open source development that already had many developers considering adopting far less inclusive practice. RETURN TO CATHEDRAL, if you will.

The problem isn't limited to open source, it's also inundating discussion forums.

Re: AI tooling must be disclosed for contributions

#350

Post by nullc »

RossBencina wrote: post #236
cvoss wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does matter how and where a PR comes from, because reviewers are fallible and finite, so trust enters the equation inevitably. You must ask "Do I trust where this came from?" And to answer that, you need to know where it come from. If trust didn't matter, there wouldn't have been a need for the Linux Kernel team to ban the University of Minnesota for attempting to intentionally smuggle bugs through the PR process…

> "Do I trust where this came from?" In an open source project I think you have to start with a baseline assumption of "trust nobody." Exceptions possibly if you know the contributors personally, or have built up trust over years of collaboration. I wouldn't reject or decline to review a PR just because I don't trust the contributor.

Better to think in terms of distrust rather than trust.

Presumably if a contributor repeatedly made bad PRs that didn't do what they said, introduced bugs, scribbled pointlessly on the codebase, and when you tried to coach or clarify at best they later forgot everything you said and at worst outright gaslit and lied to you about their PRs... you would reject or decline to review their PRs, right? You'd presumably ban the outright.

Well that's exactly what commercial LLM products, with the aid of less sophisticated users, have already done to the maintainers of many large open source projects. It's not that they're not trusted-- they should be distrusted with ample cause.

So what if the above banned contributor kept getting other people to mindlessly submit their work and even proxy communication through -- evading your well earned distrust and bans? Asking people to at least disclose that they were acting on behalf of the distrusted contributor would be the least you would do, I hope? Or even asking them to disclose if and to what extent their work was a collaboration with a distrusted contributor?

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