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Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

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Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#101

Post by mariusor »

steerablesafe wrote: post #88
mariusor wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However you did give them permission to use your code by the fact that you acceded to their terms and conditions[1] when you created an account. IANAL, I don't know if this section would hold to scrutiny in a court of law, but I'm pretty sure this is what their legal team considers to cover them when it comes to training Copilot on code hosted with them. [1] https://docs.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-terms-…

People routinely share code on Github that is not owned or at least not fully owned by them, so they can't really rely only on the ToS.

See one paragraph above what I initially linked. They cover that also.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#102

Post by nanagojo »

toxik wrote: post #83
FeepingCreature wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot generally (excepting rare cases where it produces snippets verbatim) does not steal code. The GPL restricts distribution, not usage. And (to my knowledge) no open-source license restricts learning from code. I cannot see anyone who doesn't want others to learn from their code ever release code as open-source.

I as an open source author absolutely do not want Microsoft to get richer from using my code, code that I contributed or published for the benefits of other developers. They took my work, removed my name and trained an advanced pattern matching technique to try to make code like mine and then sell it. It’s so obviously ethically questionable it’s insane. Developers are absolutely pissed about this, and rightfully so.

> I as an open source author absolutely do not want Microsoft to get richer from using my code

You are likely using the wrong license then.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#103

Post by arvindamirtaa »

zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

I'm open to new perspectives. But here's where I stand so far.

If I learn programming from a book that is copyrighted and use a small snippet (for example, how to do a particular kind of sort) from it in my own program, am I violating a copyright?

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#104

Post by nanagojo »

garmaine wrote: post #91
FeepingCreature wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot generally (excepting rare cases where it produces snippets verbatim) does not steal code. The GPL restricts distribution, not usage. And (to my knowledge) no open-source license restricts learning from code. I cannot see anyone who doesn't want others to learn from their code ever release code as open-source.

The GPL very much restrict derivative works. It's the whole point of the GPL. "Usage" in the context of the GPL does not have the meaning you are using.

It is way more nuanced than that. For example if you never redistribute your work that was a fork from GPL code, then GPL states it's ok to never give back the source.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#105

Post by ekster »

arvindamirtaa wrote: post #103
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #33

Copilot was made from stealing code on Github, ignoring the licenses set on repos such as e.g GPLv2, using AI as a trick to license-launder code. Copilot has announced their plans to become a paid service. So this product that would not be possible without public, open-source code will itself be non-public, closed-source, closed-data. It is extracting value from the commons and funneling it to a private company.

I'm open to new perspectives. But here's where I stand so far. If I learn programming from a book that is copyrighted and use a small snippet (for example, how to do a particular kind of sort) from it in my own program, am I violating a copyright?

Does the license of the book say that if you copy that snippet you can, but should provide attribution, and you don’t?

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#106

Post by spookyuser »

robertwt7 wrote: post #2

Feels like its a magical thing for me honestly. although I'm never waiting for suggestion while coding, sometimes the suggestions just slipped through and there is the OMG moment when it completes your thought. 1 thing though, tab for auto complete still does not work for me.. ever

Same, I've enjoyed using it in a couple of one off scripts and honestly it made writing them more enjoyable because I was kind of excited to see what copilot would do. I asked it to write a js function to clean special characters from a string and it worked perfectly, I think, well it worked perfectly enough for the script to complete.

I can't speak to whether or not using copilot in long lasting projects would be a good idea, but even if you just tagged the copilot generated code with a comment that said '#TODO: Verify this is correct' I still think it would help you get a lot of work done that you would normally have to switch to stackoverflow to do.

One thing that I found very interesting from the article was the idea of anchoring bias, I definitely felt this a lot. When I used copilot to generate some nontrivial functions that were directly related to my problem, if the code did not work and I ended up erasing the generated code completely, I am just realising now that when I reimplemented it myself I was still essentially using the algorithm copilot had come up with.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#107

Post by RandomBK »

toxik wrote: post #85
zaptheimpaler wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Basically you are saying any product thats free should be able to break the law arbitrarily? Google can decide to post your all email online, your location history for all time, your photos and you would be ok with that because its free? The undoubtedly free DNS server you use can leak all your requests too? You're ok with that? Yes its free, no they did not tell me or ask for my permission before using the code in t…

Google actually did do Copilot for Gmail. Nobody noticed though.

That's actually a great point. Ditto for GDocs. I've been pleasantly surprised at how good autocomplete suggestions have been in docs lately.

If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that the vitriol around Copilot stems from five factors that distinguishes it from Google:

(1) The length of the suggestions alongside some of Copilot's marketing demonstrated that perhaps non-trivial replacement of engineers with AI might not be as far-fetched or far away as most people thought. Google's autocomplete has yet to make me feel replaceable.

(2) The content of the training data had a clearer intrinsic commercial value, making perceived license violations feel more 'real'.

(3) GitHub (historically) didn't have the same reputation as Google for training AI models on data uploaded to its free services. People likely (mis)placed some trust in GitHub when they uploaded code, and this backlash is part of the adjustment process.

(4) The indication that Copilot will eventually be a paid commercial service, effectively building a commercial service off the backs of millions of open source developers. While this is perfectly legal and common across all industries, it doesn't feel good.

(5) Copilot spitting out raw training data really doesn't help its image.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#108

Post by ahepp »

seumars wrote: post #51
ALittleLight wrote: post #23

There's an interesting section that talks about what you want from a pair programmer - questioning your assumptions, spotting errors, debating design with you, etc, and how Copilot doesn't do this, but instead just spits out the code it thinks you want. That made me think that, when using Copilot, the human is actually the copilot. You're the one spotting bugs, picking different designs, and so on. I also think the d…

For what it’s worth, Copilot is not being marketed as anything else than code suggestion software - an alternative to google search, perhaps more of a “I’m feeling lucky” without having to actually type the search term. Knowing how to succinctly express a problem is half the problem after all.

Taken directly from the copilot product page:

>Tests without the toil. Tests are the backbone of any robust software engineering project. Import a unit test package, and let GitHub Copilot suggest tests that match your implementation code.

Accompanied by a picture of copilot filling out the implementation of a unit test, based on the test's name.

The implication seems very clearly that it is more than a google search. According to the ads, it understands your code well enough to write the unit tests for it!

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#109

Post by garmaine »

nanagojo wrote: post #104
garmaine wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GPL very much restrict derivative works. It's the whole point of the GPL. "Usage" in the context of the GPL does not have the meaning you are using.

It is way more nuanced than that. For example if you never redistribute your work that was a fork from GPL code, then GPL states it's ok to never give back the source.

What we both said is compatible and consistent. The derived work is restricted by the GPL's provisions. Those restrictions just don't require you to distribute the source on demand unless and until you distribute derivative works to other users.

Re: Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse?

#110

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

jph00 wrote: post #59

Hi all, Jeremy Howard here, author of the article. I'm happy to answer any questions you have about language models and program synthesis, Copilot, etc.

Hi Jeremy. Can you describe your knowledge of program synthesis? How long have you been studying the subject? Can you point to some interesting program synthesis work you have read lately?
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