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Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

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Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#181

Post by bad_user »

kaliqt wrote: post #155
Silhouette wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the tool can generate the efficient methods of achieving a result, I think it becomes obvious that one shouldn’t be able to protect it via IP law. But these kinds of tools can only do that because someone else already put in the work to write the solutions that are used to train their models. Isn't this exactly the kind of situation when copyright is supposed to apply?

But with enough training data, it's not generating it because it remembers the exact code line for line, it does it because it knows that to be a good method. Especially if you ask it to refactor it, that's a whole new creation even if it's been done before by some engineer somewhere.

It's still parroting what other people did, it's not doing any math reasoning, and it's not any different to LLMs seemingly able to compose prose or poetry.

If you want to make an argument that math or software shouldn't be copyrighted, LLMs actually make the case for stronger copyright protections.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#182

Post by sillysaurusx »

two_in_one wrote: post #179
feelandcoffee wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this would become more common with things like ChatGPT. Let's say you've been working in place A, you show your code to an LLM service (like the dozen or so Copilot-like services) and tell them to refactor. And for the sake of argument, let's say the LLM uses your code and questions for its next training dataset. A few years pass, then you go to work at Place B, and ask a question that happens to be relat…

for this ChatGPT has a 'private' mode in which your conversation exists only while you keep it open. It's not used for training, an no human see it (presumably). The negative side is it disappears with no history, so you can't continue next day. That was introduced after complains similar to yours. Some companies put a total ban.

.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#183

Post by dylan604 »

crazygringo wrote: post #122

I seriously do not understand why any employee would steal their previous employers' code to use at a new employer. There's little-to-no personal upside, and only horrible downside if you get caught. I mean, this guy: > Moniruzzaman allegedly gave his personal email unauthorized access to Valeo's systems to steal "tens of thousands of files" and 6GB of source code shortly after that development... Valeo said its form…

Is printing out and pinning the prints to the wall still a thing done IRL and not just a movie thing? We had to do prints to green-bar back in school days when we only had shared time at the school's computer lab. But I haven't considered printing code out since the early 90s. It seems so out of place in today's time

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#184

Post by mattnewton »

happytiger wrote: post #162
mattnewton wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is this morally theft anymore than hiring someone who has experience solving the problem to solve the problem again? As long as they aren’t reproducing the solution verbatim it’s already morally acceptable to hire experts for their experience. Why would “hiring” software for its “experience” be different?

Because he copied the source code or at least had it for reference all over the room he was coding in?

Right, and if you do that, it’s theft under the law because we want to reward people for doing novel work. In the same way if I could get GitHub to send me a copy of your private proprietary repository without your consent, that would be called theft by the law, because it removes the incentive to invest in proprietary software. If I hire one of the engineers who worked in that repository and spent years on the problem so she could code solutions to it in their sleep that’s not theft in the law, because we value labor rights, the free exchange of ideas, and want to incentivize building up human capital. Even as it creates a new risk people investing in proprietary software have to deal with now.

If I hire “software” that learned from a copy written source, but doesn’t reproduce the copywritten code directly, why is that different from hiring someone who worked on that project before?

I think morality isn’t a useful compass here, it isn’t a moral problem. It’s a problem of what kinds of rules you want for society to increase utility for everyone around these tools. If you restrict learning from each other too much you stifle progress. If you make it too easy to copy the leader in a field you disincentivize anyone doing novel research first.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#185

Post by dylan604 »

sircastor wrote: post #149
feelandcoffee wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this would become more common with things like ChatGPT. Let's say you've been working in place A, you show your code to an LLM service (like the dozen or so Copilot-like services) and tell them to refactor. And for the sake of argument, let's say the LLM uses your code and questions for its next training dataset. A few years pass, then you go to work at Place B, and ask a question that happens to be relat…

For this reason, and a few others, my workplace simply put a blanket ban on these kinds of tools. If our code is never exposed to the learning tool, it’s never in danger of being showing up somewhere else. Incidental to that, I feel like these tools expose the reality behind “copyrighting code/math” and how fallacious it is. If the tool can generate the efficient methods of achieving a result, I think it becomes obvi…

Just like with social media, all it takes is one person to not honor that request, and boom! your shit is out there. Sure, you can fire the offending party, but you can't just ask Co-pilot to not use your contributions. That's like asking the internet to give those pictures back. It ain't gonna happen.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#186

Post by dylan604 »

blt wrote: post #172
crazygringo wrote: post #122

I seriously do not understand why any employee would steal their previous employers' code to use at a new employer. There's little-to-no personal upside, and only horrible downside if you get caught. I mean, this guy: > Moniruzzaman allegedly gave his personal email unauthorized access to Valeo's systems to steal "tens of thousands of files" and 6GB of source code shortly after that development... Valeo said its form…

Maybe he was offered the job at Nvidia on the condition that he arrives with Valeo's code.

Prove that conversation didn't happen. Of course it's not going to be in writing. Of course they are denying it now. Otherwise, there's literally no defense. So you either fall on the sword, or blame someone else.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#187

Post by thfuran »

sircastor wrote: post #149
feelandcoffee wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if this would become more common with things like ChatGPT. Let's say you've been working in place A, you show your code to an LLM service (like the dozen or so Copilot-like services) and tell them to refactor. And for the sake of argument, let's say the LLM uses your code and questions for its next training dataset. A few years pass, then you go to work at Place B, and ask a question that happens to be relat…

For this reason, and a few others, my workplace simply put a blanket ban on these kinds of tools. If our code is never exposed to the learning tool, it’s never in danger of being showing up somewhere else. Incidental to that, I feel like these tools expose the reality behind “copyrighting code/math” and how fallacious it is. If the tool can generate the efficient methods of achieving a result, I think it becomes obvi…

>If the tool can generate the efficient methods of achieving a result, I think it becomes obvious that one shouldn’t be able to protect it via IP law.

Why does that only hold when the result in question is in software? Machines are just tools for achieving results.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#188

Post by nvy »

dylan604 wrote: post #183
crazygringo wrote: post #122

I seriously do not understand why any employee would steal their previous employers' code to use at a new employer. There's little-to-no personal upside, and only horrible downside if you get caught. I mean, this guy: > Moniruzzaman allegedly gave his personal email unauthorized access to Valeo's systems to steal "tens of thousands of files" and 6GB of source code shortly after that development... Valeo said its form…

Is printing out and pinning the prints to the wall still a thing done IRL and not just a movie thing? We had to do prints to green-bar back in school days when we only had shared time at the school's computer lab. But I haven't considered printing code out since the early 90s. It seems so out of place in today's time

>But I haven't considered printing code out since the early 90s.

TFA says he had documentation printouts, not code listings. That I can relate to; when learning something new or unfamiliar it's nice to be able to flip back and forth through the physical copy, make annotations, etc.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#189

Post by nvy »

thfuran wrote: post #187
sircastor wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For this reason, and a few others, my workplace simply put a blanket ban on these kinds of tools. If our code is never exposed to the learning tool, it’s never in danger of being showing up somewhere else. Incidental to that, I feel like these tools expose the reality behind “copyrighting code/math” and how fallacious it is. If the tool can generate the efficient methods of achieving a result, I think it becomes obvi…

>If the tool can generate the efficient methods of achieving a result, I think it becomes obvious that one shouldn’t be able to protect it via IP law. Why does that only hold when the result in question is in software? Machines are just tools for achieving results.

Because you can patent a machine. The argument is that software is "just math" (because it literally is just doing binary arithmetic) and mathematics cannot be patented.

Re: Nvidia sued for stealing trade secrets: blunder showed rival company's code

#190

Post by [deleted] »

FirmwareBurner wrote: post #76
throwaway54_56 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen patents. The whole point is to share a method of doing something, in return for exclusive use of that method for a period of time. That's the theory, anyway.

Then you misunderstood or saw too few patents.

[deleted]
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