Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

github.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

171–180 of 464 posts

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#171

Post by friendzis »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #74
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?

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…

> Is something that in no way or shape resembles a copyrighted work (i.e. a model) actually distributing that work?

Does a digitally encoded version resemble a copyrighted work in some shape or form?

Where is this hangup on models being something entirely different than an encoding coming from? Given enough prodding they can reproduce training data verbatim or close to that. Okay, given enough prodding notepad can do that too, so uncertainty is understandable.

This is one of the big reasons companies are putting effort into the so called "safety": when the legal battles are eventually fought, they would have an argument that they made their best so that the amount of prodding required to extract any information potentially putting them under liability is too great to matter.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#172

Post by direwolf20 »

Lerc wrote: post #94
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…

>AIs are not human and therefore their output is a human authored contribution and only human authored things are covered by copyright. That is a non sequitur. Also, I'm not sure if copyright applies to humans, or persons (not that I have encountered particularly creative corporations, but Taranaki Maunga has been known for large scale decorative works)

A "large scale decorative work" is the strangest euphemism for a dormant volcano I've ever heard.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#173

Post by jasomill »

sambaumann wrote: post #30
galaxyLogic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Makes sense to me. But so anybody can take Public Domain code and place it under GNU Public License (by dropping it into a Linux source-code file) ? Surely the person doing so would be responsible for doing so, but are they doing anything wrong?

Sqlite’s source code is public domain. Surely if you dropped the sqlite source code into Linux, it wouldn’t suddenly become GPL code? I’m not sure how it works

The Linux kernel would become a GPLv2-licensed derivative work of SQLite, but that doesn’t matter, because public domain works, by definition, are not subject to copyright restrictions.

Claiming copyright on an unmodified public domain work is a lie, so in some circumstances could be an element of fraud, but still wouldn’t be a copyright violation.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#174

Post by direwolf20 »

paradoxyl wrote: post #143
Sharlin wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Because the law doesn't say it can. It's that simple.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#175

Post by direwolf20 »

johnisgood wrote: post #117
sarchertech wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Right now it's very easy not to infringe on copyrighted code if you write the code yourself. Humans routinely produce code similar to or identical to existing copyrighted code without direct copying.

And that's not an infringement. Actual copying is the infringement, not having the same code. The most likely way to have the same code is by copying, but it's not the only way.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#176

Post by zxexz »

I like this. It's just saying you have responsibility for the tools you wield. It's concise.

Side note, I'm not sure why I feel weird about having the string "Assisted-by: AGENT_NAME:MODEL_VERSION" [TOOL1] [TOOL2] in the kernel docs source :D. Mostly joking. But if the Linux kernel has it now, I guess it's the inflection point for...something.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#177

Post by direwolf20 »

manwe150 wrote: post #135
cwnyth wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is correct, and it's not limited to code. I can take the story of Cinderella, create something new out of it, copyright my new work, but Cinderella remains public domain for someone else to do something with. If I use public domain code in a project under a license, the whole work remains under the license, but not the public domain code. I'm not sure what the hullabaloo is about.

If someone else uses your exact same prompt to generate the exact same code, can you claim copyright infringement against them? If the output is possible to copyright, then you could claim their prompt is infringement (just like if it reproduced Harry Potter). If it isn’t copyrightable, then the kernel would not have legal standing to enforce the GPL on those lines of code against any future AI reproduction of them.…

Copyright infringement is triggered by the act of copying, not by having the same bytes.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#180

Post by benatkin »

philipov wrote: post #14
newsoftheday wrote: post #10

> All code must be compatible with GPL-2.0-only How can you guarantee that will happen when AI has been trained a world full of multiple licenses and even closed source material without permission of the copyright owners...I confirmed that with several AI's just now.

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.

If they merge it in despite it having the model version in the commit, then they're arguably taking a position on it too - that it's fine to use code from an AI that was trained like that.
Post reply on HN