[flagged]
AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
71–80 of 464 posts
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
But then if AI output is not under GNU General Public License, how can it become so just because a Linux-developer adds it to the code-base?
Same as if a regular person did the same. They are responsible for it. If you're using AI, check the code doesn't violate licenses
In certain law cases plagiarization can be influenced by the fact if person is exposed to the copyrighted work. AI models are exposed to very large corpus of works..
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#73Basically the rules are that you can use AI, but you take full responsibility for your commits and code must satisfy the license. That's... refreshingly normal? Surely something most people acting in good faith can get behind.
But then if AI output is not under GNU General Public License, how can it become so just because a Linux-developer adds it to the code-base?
Tab complete does not produce copyrightable material either. Yet we don't require software to be written in nano.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#74Basically the rules are that you can use AI, but you take full responsibility for your commits and code must satisfy the license. That's... refreshingly normal? Surely something most people acting in good faith can get behind.
But then if AI output is not under GNU General Public License, how can it become so just because a Linux-developer adds it to the code-base?
AIs are not human and therefore their output is a human authored contribution and only human authored things are covered by copyright. The work might hypothetically infringe on other people's copyright. But such an infringement does not happen until a human decides to create and distribute a work that somehow integrates that generated code or text.
The solution documented here seems very pragmatic. You as a contributor simply state that you are making the contribution and that you are not infringing on other people's work with that contribution under the GPLv2. And you document the fact that you used AI for transparency reasons.
There is a lot of legal murkiness around how training data is handled, and the output of the models. Or even the models themselves. Is something that in no way or shape resembles a copyrighted work (i.e. a model) actually distributing that work? The legal arguments here will probably take a long time to settle but it seems the fair use concept offers a way out here. You might create potentially infringing work with a model that may or may not be covered by fair use. But that would be your decision.
For small contributions to the Linux kernel it would be hard to argue that a passing resemblance of say a for loop in the contribution to some for loop in somebody else's code base would be anything else than coincidence or fair use.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#75Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure we could change the law. It would be a stupid change to allow individuals, organizations, and companies to completely shield themselves from the consequences of risky behaviors (more than we already do) simply by assigning all liability to a fall guy.
In this case, the "fall guy" is the person who actually introduced the code in question into the codebase. They wouldn't be some patsy that is around just to take blame, but the actual responsible party for the issue.
Imagine your a factory owner and you need a chemical delivered from across the country, but the chemical is dangerous and if the tanker truck drives faster than 50 miles per hour it has a 0.001% chance per mile of exploding.
You hire an independent contractor and tell him that he can drive 60 miles per hour if he wants to but if it explodes he accepts responsibility.
He does and it explodes killing 10 people. If the family of those 10 people has evidence you created the conditions to cause the explosion in order to benefit your company, you're probably going to lose in civil court.
Linus benefits from the increase velocity of people using AI. He doesn't get to put all the liability on the people contributing.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
What law exactly are you suggesting needs to be changed? How is this any different from what already happens right now, today?
Right now it's very easy not to infringe on copyrighted code if you write the code yourself. In the vast majority of cases if you infringed it's because you did something wrong that you could have prevented (in the case where you didn't do anything wrong, inducement creation is an affirmative defense against copyright infringement). That is not the case when using AI generated code. There is no way to use it without…
It’s a foreseeable outcome that humans might introduce copyrighted code into the kernel.
I think you’re looking for problems that don’t really exist here, you seem committed to an anti AI stance where none is justified.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#77Earlier quoted context omitted.
If the output is public domain it's fine as I understand it.
This ruling is IMO/IANAL based on lawyers and judges not understanding how LLMs work internally, falling for the marketing campaign calling them "AI" and not understanding the full implications. LLM-creation ("training") involves detecting/compressing patterns of the input. Inference generates statistically probable based on similarities of patterns to those found in the "training" input. Computers don't learn or hav…
>LLM-creation ("training") involves detecting/compressing patterns of the input.
There's a pretty compelling argument that this is essentially what we do, and that what we think of as creativity is just copying, transforming, and combining ideas.
LLMs are interesting because that compression forces distilling the world down into its constituent parts and learning about the relationships between ideas. While it's absolutely possible (or even likely for certain prompts) that models can regurgitate text very similar to their inputs, that is not usually what seems to be happening.
They actually appear to be little remix engines that can fit the pieces together to solve the thing you're asking for, and we do have some evidence that the models are able to accomplish things that are not represented in their training sets.
Kirby Ferguson's video on this is pretty great: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X9RYuvPCQUA
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
You take responsibility. That means if the AI messes up, you get punished. No pushing blame onto the stupid computer. If you're not comfortable with that, don't use the AI.
There’s no reasonable way for you to use AI generated code and guarantee it doesn’t infringe. The whole use it but if it behaves as expected, it’s your fault is a ridiculous stance.
Their position is probably that LLM technology itself does not require training on code with incompatible licenses, and they probably also tend to avoid engaging in the philosophical debate over whether LLM-generated output is a derivative copy or an original creation (like how humans produce similar code without copying after being exposed to code). I think that even if they view it as derivative, they're being pragmatic - they don't want to block LLM use across the board, since in principle you can train on properly licensed, GPL-compatible data.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#79 > Signed-Off ...
> The human submitter is responsible for:
> Reviewing all AI-generated code
> Ensuring compliance with licensing requirements
> Adding their own Signed-off-by tag to certify the DCO
> Taking full responsibility for the contribution
> Attribution: ... Contributions should include an Assisted-by tag in the following format:
I am sure that this was reviewed by attorneys before being published as policy, because of the copyright implications.
Hopefully this will set the trend and provide definitive guidance for a number of Devs that were not only seeing the utility behind ai assistance but also the acrimony from some quarters, causing some fence-sitting.
Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel
#80Fork the kernel! Humans for humans! Don't let skynet win!!!
> Fork the kernel!
pre "clanker-linux".
I am more intrigued by the inevitable Linux distro that will refuse any code that has AI contributions in it.