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Part of my code makes Copilot crash

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Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#161

Post by jfoster »

mcphage wrote: post #88
Thorentis wrote: post #66

What is Github worried about? That Copilot might suggest some code that checks for a "gender" variable being only one of two values? Utterly absurd that we've now reached this point. I already had plenty of reasons to boycott Copilot, now I have another one.

> What is Github worried about? That Copilot might suggest some code that checks for a "gender" variable being only one of two values? Perhaps Github is worried about a backlash if it suggests code that allows for more than 2 values.

The backlash they ought to be worried about is the one from their customers when it refuses to operate due to an ongoing battle between opposing groups of extremists.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#162

Post by davesque »

Msw242 wrote: post #137
davesque wrote: post #107

Has it been somehow confirmed that this was the cause of the issue or was it just that one guy's speculation? I don't see anything that confirmed this as the cause. Am I missing something in the linked content?

There's a whole bad word list meant to suppress output. It's stored client side. https://twitter.com/moyix/status/1433254293352730628?t=NIpgb...

Wow, awesome crypto work in that thread.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#163

Post by mlyle »

nonethewiser wrote: post #154
mlyle wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They refer to it as “eliminating bias”, I don't think, e.g. being able to handle black faces correctly is some sort of massive ideological commitment. So let's not pretend that the entire concern of bias in AI is irrelevant, no matter where you stand on gender. > conformance with one very specific set of ideological commitments You know-- let's just talk about basic respect and dignity: if someone strongly wants to…

> I don't think, e.g. being able to handle black faces correctly is some sort of massive ideological commitment. Why did you suggest THIS as an example of what hes talking about? He doesn't indicate that he disagrees with this case. Furthermore,that sounds like a problem of having incomplete training data. Regardless, manually tweaking a model points to a failure in the process somewhere.

> Why did you suggest THIS as an example of what hes talking about?

He seems to be pooh-poohing the entire idea of "eliminating bias" in AI. So I felt it was important to

* point out that there are clear cases of bias in AI no matter where you stand on gender

* move on to explain a closely related case (using historical speech about race could be offensive)

* use the lesson to show that using historical speech about gender could be problematic as well

> Furthermore,that sounds like a problem of having incomplete training data.

Training a model from historical data can only reflect historical approaches. The social conventions around gender are changing rapidly and are contentious.

> Regardless, manually tweaking a model points to a failure in the process somewhere.

Here, there's no manual tweaking of the model: merely a refusal to return results in an area where the model has proven problematic.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#164

Post by mlyle »

onionisafruit wrote: post #152
mlyle wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they don't "adjust" this, each user gets a random-ish result from all the code out there-- depending on mostly-unrelated context, it suggests a lot of genders or just 2. In turn, you can guarantee both groups of people end up upset.

What’s there to be upset by? Both groups know the other exists, and both groups know that the other group has written code that copilot trained on.

Both groups will angrily complain that Copilot is suggesting the wrong thing.

Right now both groups are trying to silence the other-- with school libraries, etc, in the crossfire being angrily denounced.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#165

Post by onionisafruit »

tom_ wrote: post #120
nomilk wrote: post #16

> Copilot crash because the word “gender” A metaphor for our times.

I worked on a video game in the late 2000s, and one of the bits of code I did was the code for filling the seats in the stadium with people. One of the artists cobbled together like 5 low poly man models and 5 low poly woman models, and you could just about tell the difference, and I put some code in there to ensure the genders were evenly distributed. (The 2 genders, I mean. Man, and woman.) Looking back, I don't ev…

I would love to think msft blocks gender because your code somehow made it into the training data and somebody was confused seeing “squat” as a gender.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#166

Post by davoneus »

mlyle wrote: post #142
camdenlock wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a zealous push by a small but extremely vocal fringe to impose their very particular worldview onto emerging AI/ML models like this. They refer to it as “eliminating bias”, but it’s really just an attempt to mold these new technologies into conformance with one very specific set of ideological commitments. Proponents view it as some kind of obvious universal good, and are confused when anyone else is appalled…

> They refer to it as “eliminating bias”, I don't think, e.g. being able to handle black faces correctly is some sort of massive ideological commitment. So let's not pretend that the entire concern of bias in AI is irrelevant, no matter where you stand on gender. > conformance with one very specific set of ideological commitments You know-- let's just talk about basic respect and dignity: if someone strongly wants to…

I call complete and utter BS. This is in no way different than disabling a word procesors autocorrect when a writer uses the term gender in their novel.

The programmer should be able to use whatever the hell terms they want to use in their program. If the customer base doesn't like it that's their right. But it's not the right of the damn language parser programmer.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#167

Post by philipswood »

fny wrote: post #122

So I've just tested it, and I can confirm, yes, copilot refuses to give suggestions related to gender. Now I know a lot of people are calling this absurd, but looking more closely, there are two PR nightmare scenarios. 1. Copilot makes a suggestion that implies gender is binary, a certain community explodes with anger and an entire news hype cycle starts about how Microsoft is enforcing views on gender with code. 2.…

Choosing door 3 unfortunately leads to ...

A certain community explodes with anger since their machine learning dev-tooling is closed and has arbitrary restrictions.

If you try to please everybody, someone won't like it.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#168

Post by smegsicle »

rayiner wrote: post #89
MarkSweep wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a whole Wikipedia article for it!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgenderism

I wish “the discourse” would learn to acknowledge the difference between post-genderist ideas, and basic rights for transgender people. The latter is (1) already the law of the land, and (2) not politically controversial: https://www.kff.org/other/press-release/poll-large-majoritie... (“Large majorities of Americans think it should be illegal for either employers or health care providers to discriminate against peopl…

No post body was provided.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#169

Post by scarface74 »

camdenlock wrote: post #125
LAC-Tech wrote: post #87

Aren't we missing the forest for the trees here? We're zeroing in on how silly is it for copilot to trigger its content filter on the word "gender". To me the real issue is that copilot has a content filter in the first place. It's unwelcome and unnecessary.

There’s a zealous push by a small but extremely vocal fringe to impose their very particular worldview onto emerging AI/ML models like this. They refer to it as “eliminating bias”, but it’s really just an attempt to mold these new technologies into conformance with one very specific set of ideological commitments. Proponents view it as some kind of obvious universal good, and are confused when anyone else is appalled…

So, I have a security camera that triggers when it sees a person or an animal and notifies you of what it thinks it sees. It always detect my tall big Black son as an “animal”. It doesn’t do that for anyone else who comes up to the door.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#170

Post by mlyle »

davoneus wrote: post #166
mlyle wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They refer to it as “eliminating bias”, I don't think, e.g. being able to handle black faces correctly is some sort of massive ideological commitment. So let's not pretend that the entire concern of bias in AI is irrelevant, no matter where you stand on gender. > conformance with one very specific set of ideological commitments You know-- let's just talk about basic respect and dignity: if someone strongly wants to…

I call complete and utter BS. This is in no way different than disabling a word procesors autocorrect when a writer uses the term gender in their novel. The programmer should be able to use whatever the hell terms they want to use in their program. If the customer base doesn't like it that's their right. But it's not the right of the damn language parser programmer.

> But it's not the right of the damn language parser programmer.

This isn't a language parser.

This is a tool that suggests implementations of small portions of code.

If the training data is out of date, it's quite reasonable for people employing that model to decide it shouldn't return results based on the out-of-date training data.

Even about completely different things. If the output is C code containing gets(), maybe we should decline to return the result.

> he programmer should be able to use whatever the hell terms they want to use in their program.

Indeed, it leaves it completely up to the programmer by refusing to suggest an implementation that would favor either side of the debate.

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