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AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

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Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#141

Post by ninjagoo »

martin-t wrote: post #113
ninjagoo wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Just like stealing fractional amounts of money[3] should not be legal, violating the licenses of the training data by reusing fractional amounts from each should not be legal either. I think you'll find that this is not settled in the courts, depending on how the data was obtained. If the data was obtained legally, say a purchased book, courts have been finding that using it for training is fair use ( Bartz v. Anth…

> The Moral Bottomline: if you didn't have to eat, would you care about who copies your work as long as you get credited? Yes. I have 2 issues with "post-scarcity": - It often implicitly assumes humanity is one homogeneous group where this state applies to everyone. In reality, if post-scarcity is possible, some people will be lucky enough to have the means to live that lifestyle while others will still by dying of h…

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Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#142

Post by Sharlin »

RussianCow wrote: post #108
mcv wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't a court in the US declare that AI generated content cannot be copyrighted? I think that could be a problem for AI generated code. Fine for projects with an MIT/BSD license I suppose, but GPL relies on copyright. However, if the code has been slightly changed by a human, it can be copyrighted again. I think.

> Didn't a court in the US declare that AI generated content cannot be copyrighted? No, my understanding is that AI generated content can't be copyrighted by the AI . A human can still copyright it, however.

It's obvious that a computer program cannot have copyright because computer programs are not persons in any currently existing jurisdiction.

Whether a person can claim copyright of the output of a computer program is generally understood as depending on whether there was sufficient creative effort from said person, and it doesn't really matter whether the program is Photoshop or ChatGPT.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#143

Post by paradoxyl »

Sharlin wrote: post #142
RussianCow wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Didn't a court in the US declare that AI generated content cannot be copyrighted? No, my understanding is that AI generated content can't be copyrighted by the AI . A human can still copyright it, however.

It's obvious that a computer program cannot have copyright because computer programs are not persons in any currently existing jurisdiction. Whether a person can claim copyright of the output of a computer program is generally understood as depending on whether there was sufficient creative effort from said person, and it doesn't really matter whether the program is Photoshop or ChatGPT.

Just thinking out loud... why can't an algorithm be an artificial person in the legal sense that a corporation is? Why not legally incorporate the AI as a corporation so it can operate in the real world: have accounts, create and hold copyrights...

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#144

Post by davemp »

KK7NIL wrote: post #45
martin-t wrote: post #18

This feels like the OSS community is giving up. LLMs are lossily-compressed models of code and other text (often mass-scraped despite explicit non-consent) which has licenses almost always requiring attribution and very often other conditions. Just a few weeks ago a SOTA model was shown to reproduce non-trivial amounts of licensed code[0]. The idea of intelligence being emergent from compression is nothing new[1]. Th…

> I strongly object to anthropomorphising text transformers (e.g. "Assisted-by"). I don't think this is anthropomorphising, especially considering they also include non-LLM tools in that "Assisted-by" section. We're well past the Turing test now, whether these things are actually sentient or not is of no pragmatic importance if we can't distinguish their output from a sentient creature, especially when it comes to pr…

> We're well past the Turing test now

Nope, there is no “The” Turing Test. Go read his original paper before parroting pop sci nonsense.

The Turing test paper proposes an adversarial game to deduce if the interviewee is human. It’s extremely well thought out. Seriously, read it. Turing mentions that he’d wager something like 70% of unprepared humans wouldn’t be able to correctly discern in the near future. He never claims there to be a definitive test that establishes sentience.

Turing may have won that wager (impressive), but there are clear tells similar to the “how many the r’s are in strawberries?” that an informed interrogator could reliably exploit.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#145

Post by fxtentacle »

nitwit005 wrote: post #95
jillesvangurp wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 contribut…

That you can't copyright the AI's output (in the US, at least), doesn't imply it doesn't contain copyrighted material. If you generate an image of a Disney character, Disney still owns the copyright to that character.

Yes. And that’s why the rules say that the human submitting the code is responsible for preventing this case.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#146

Post by rpdillon »

noosphr wrote: post #73
galaxyLogic wrote: post #7

Earlier 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?

Tab complete does not produce copyrightable material either. Yet we don't require software to be written in nano.

This is a nice point that I haven't seen before. It's interesting to regress AI to the simplest form and see how we treat it as a test for the more complex cases.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#147

Post by testing22321 »

sarchertech wrote: post #29

This does nothing to shield Linux from responsibility for infringing code. This is essentially like a retail store saying the supplier is responsible for eliminating all traces of THC from their hemp when they know that isn’t a reasonable request to make. It’s a foreseeable consequence. You don’t get to grant yourself immunity from liability like this.

> This does nothing to shield Linux from responsibility for infringing code.

It’s no worse than non-AI assisted code.

I could easily copy-paste proprietary code, sign my name that it’s not and that it complies with the GPL and submit it.

At the end of the day, it just comes down to a lying human.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#148

Post by abletonlive »

papercrane wrote: post #133
tadfisher wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, a court did not declare that. The case involved a person trying to register a work with only the AI system listed as author. The Supreme Court decided that you can't do that, you need to list a human being as author to register a work with the Copyright Office. This stems from existing precedent where someone tried to register a photograph with the monkey photographer listed as author. I don't believe the idea th…

It's almost a certainty that you can't copyright code that was generated entirely by an AI. Copyright requires some amount of human originality. You could copyright the prompt, and if you modify the generated code you can claim copyright on your modifications. The closest applicable case would be the monkey selfie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

It's almost certain that you're wrong. It's like saying I can't copyright a song if my modular synthesizer generated it. Why would you think this?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#149

Post by testing22321 »

sarchertech wrote: post #39
philipov wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think it's an unacceptable risk to use a tool you can't trust when your own head is on the line, you're right, and you shouldn't use it. You don't have to guarantee anything. You just have to accept punishment.

That’s just it though it’s not just your head. The liability could very likely also fall on the Linux foundation. You can’t say “you can do this thing that we know will cause problems that you have no way to mitigate, but if it does we’re not liable”. The infringement was a foreseeable consequence of the policy.

> liability could very likely also fall on the Linux foundation.

It’s just the same as if I copy-paste proprietary code into the kernel and lie about it being GPL.

Is the Linux foundation liable there?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#150

Post by wetpaws »

abletonlive wrote: post #148
papercrane wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost a certainty that you can't copyright code that was generated entirely by an AI. Copyright requires some amount of human originality. You could copyright the prompt, and if you modify the generated code you can claim copyright on your modifications. The closest applicable case would be the monkey selfie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monkey_selfie_copyright_disput...

It's almost certain that you're wrong. It's like saying I can't copyright a song if my modular synthesizer generated it. Why would you think this?

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