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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

#191

Post by galaxyLogic »

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.

So if creative effort was put into writing the prompt, then whoever wrote the prompt should have the copyright to the output produced by ChatGPT?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#192

Post by ebbi »

lrvick wrote: post #184
qsort wrote: post #5

Basically 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.

It cannot be understated how religiously opposed many in the Linux community are to even a single AI assisted commit landing in the kernel no matter how well reviewed. Plenty see Torvalds as a traitor for this policy and will never contribute again if any clearly labeled AI generated code is actually allowed to merge.

True - on Mastodon there is a very vocal crowd that are against AI in general, and are identifying Linux distros that have AI generated code with the view of boycotting it.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#193

Post by cinntaile »

lrvick wrote: post #184
qsort wrote: post #5

Basically 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.

It cannot be understated how religiously opposed many in the Linux community are to even a single AI assisted commit landing in the kernel no matter how well reviewed. Plenty see Torvalds as a traitor for this policy and will never contribute again if any clearly labeled AI generated code is actually allowed to merge.

Some people are just against change, that's nothing new. If Linus was like them, he would never have started linux in the first place.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#194

Post by galaxyLogic »

sarchertech wrote: post #68
Chance-Device wrote: post #64

Earlier 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…

So it's a bit as if Linux Organization told its contributors you can bring in infringing code but you must agree you are liable for any infringement?

But if a lawsuit was later brought who would be sued? The individual author or the organization? In other words can an organization reduce its liability if it tells its employees "You can break the law as long as you agree you are solely responsible for such illegal actions?

It would seem to me that the employer would be liable if they "encourage" this way of working?

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#195

Post by heavyset_go »

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…

Copyright Office's interpretation of US copyright laws says that AI is not human, thus not an attributable author for copyright registration, and output based on mere prompting is no one's IP, it can't be copyrighted[1].

When AI output can be copyrighted is when copyrighted elements are expressed in it, like if you put copyrighted content in a prompt and it is expressed in the output, or the output is transformed substantially with human creativity in arrangement, form, composition, etc.

[1] https://newsroom.loc.gov/news/copyright-office-releases-part...

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#196

Post by senko »

ninjagoo wrote: post #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: Responsibility assigned to where it should lie. Expected no less from Torvalds,…

> Expected no less from Torvalds

This was written by Sasha Levin referencing a Linux maintainers’ discussion.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#197

Post by dxdm »

lrvick wrote: post #184
qsort wrote: post #5

Basically 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.

It cannot be understated how religiously opposed many in the Linux community are to even a single AI assisted commit landing in the kernel no matter how well reviewed. Plenty see Torvalds as a traitor for this policy and will never contribute again if any clearly labeled AI generated code is actually allowed to merge.

Sounds dramatic, but it entirely depends on what "many" and "plenty" means in your comment, and who exactly is included. So far, what you wrote can be seen as an expectable level of drama surrounding such projects.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#198

Post by galaxyLogic »

martin-t wrote: post #87
supern0va wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 abso…

So? Why should it be legal? If people find this cool and wanna play with it, they can, just make sure to only mix compatible licenses in the training data and license the output appropriately. Well, the attribution issue is still there, so maybe they can restrict themselves to public domain stuff. If LLMs are so capable, it shouldn't limit the quality of their output too much. Now for the real issue: what do you thin…

> Do you think the people who made it possible, who spent years of their life building and maintaining open source code, will be rewarded?

I think they should be rewarded more than they are currently. But isn't the GNU Public License bassically saying you can use such source-code without giving any rewards what so ever?

But I see your The reward for Open Source developers is the public recognition for their works. LLMs can take that recognition away.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#199

Post by robinsonb5 »

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.…

> If someone else uses your exact same prompt to generate the exact same code, can you claim copyright infringement against them?

No, because they've independently obtained it from the same source that you did, so their copy is "upstream" of your imposing of a new license.

Realistically, adding a license to public domain work is only really meaningful when you've used it as a starting point for something else, and want to apply your license to the derivative work.

Re: AI assistance when contributing to the Linux kernel

#200

Post by goatlover »

cinntaile wrote: post #193
lrvick wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It cannot be understated how religiously opposed many in the Linux community are to even a single AI assisted commit landing in the kernel no matter how well reviewed. Plenty see Torvalds as a traitor for this policy and will never contribute again if any clearly labeled AI generated code is actually allowed to merge.

Some people are just against change, that's nothing new. If Linus was like them, he would never have started linux in the first place.

Are they against change in general, or certain kinds of change? Remember when social media was seen as near universal good kind of progress? Not so much now.
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