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Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

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Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#211

Post by mattmanser »

acedTrex wrote: post #168
itsmekali321 wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

send your blog link please

https://jaysthoughts.com/aithoughts1 Bit of a rambly rant, but the prediction stuff I was tongue in cheek referring to above is at the bottom.

Looks like your blog post got submitted here and then I assume triggered the flame war flag. A lot of people just reading the title and knee jerking in the comments:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44384610

Funny, as the entire thing starts off with "Now, full disclosure, the title is a bit tongue-in-cheek.".

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#212

Post by Thorrez »

benlivengood wrote: post #35

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

Is there any likelihood that the output of the model would be public domain? Even if the model itself is public domain, the prompt was created by a human and impacted the output, so I don't see how the output could be public domain. And then after that, the output was hopefully reviewed by the original prompting human and likely reviewed by another human during code review, leading to more human impact on the final code.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#213

Post by loktarogar »

pretoriusdre wrote: post #155
loktarogar wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a stance about the merits of AI generated code but about the legal status of it, in terms of who owns it and related concepts.

Yes the reasoning behind the decision is clear and as you described. But I would also make the point that the decision also comes with certain consequences, to which a discussion about merits is directly relevant.

> Essentially, people who chose not to use AI code tools will be overtaken by the people who do. That's the unfortunate reality.

Who is going to "overtake" QEMU, what exactly does that mean, and what will it matter if they are?

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#214

Post by a57721 »

viraptor wrote: post #125
alganet wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you show these 3 things to us?

Only the simplest one is open (and before you discount it as too trivial, somehow none of the other ones did what I wanted) https://github.com/viraptor/pomodoro The others are just too specific for me to be useful for anyone else: an android app for automatic processing of some text messages and a work scheduling/prioritising thing. The time to make them generic enough to share would be much longer than creating my s…

> and before you discount it as too trivial, somehow none of the other ones did what I wanted

No offense, it's really great that you are able to make apps that do exactly what you want, but your examples are not very good to show that "software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will not be competitive with AI assisted or written projects" (as someone else suggested above). Complex real world software is different from pomodoro timers and TODO lists.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#215

Post by gadders »

AJ007 wrote: post #63
benlivengood wrote: post #35

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

I am guessing they don't need people to prove that contributions didn't contain AI code, they just need the contributor to say they didn't use any AI code. That way, if any AI code is found in their contribution the liability lies with the contributor (but IANAL).

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#216

Post by _flux »

behringer wrote: post #173
kazinator wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the first place, in order to post to StackOverflow, you are required to have the copyright over the code, and be able to grant them a perpetual license. They redistribute the material under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/ This allows visitors to use the material, with attribution. One can, of course, use the ideas in a SO answer to develop one's own solution.

Show me the professional code base with the attribution to stack overflow and I'll eat my hat.

Obviously I cannot show the code base, but when I pick a pre-existing solution from Stackoverflow or elsewhere—though it is quite rare—I do add a comment linking to the source: after all, in case of SA the discussion there might be interesting for the future maintainers of the function.

I just checked, though, and the code base I'm now working with has eight stackoverflow links. Not all are even written by me, according to quick check with git blame and git log -S..

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#217

Post by graemep »

benlivengood wrote: post #35

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

Proprietary source code would not usually end up training LLMs. Unless its leaked, how would an LLM have access to it?

> it would require speculative copyright owners to disassemble their binaries

I wonder whether AI might be a useful tool for making that easier.

If you have evidence then you can get courts to order disclosure or examination of code.

> And plenty of proprietary software has public domain code in it already.

I am pretty sure there is a significant amount of proprietary code that has FOSS code in it, against license terms (especially GPL and similar).

A lot of proprietary code is now been written using AIs trained on FOSS code, and companies are open about this. It might open an interesting can of worms.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#218

Post by graemep »

gadders wrote: post #215
AJ007 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand what experienced developers don't want random AI contributions from no-knowledge "developers" contributing to a project. In any situation, if a human is review AI code line by line that would tie up humans for years, even ignoring anything legally. #1 There will be no verifiable way to prove something was AI generated beyond early models. #2 Software projects that somehow are 100% human developed will no…

I am guessing they don't need people to prove that contributions didn't contain AI code, they just need the contributor to say they didn't use any AI code. That way, if any AI code is found in their contribution the liability lies with the contributor (but IANAL).

AFAIK in most places it might help with the amount of damages, but does not let you off the hook.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#219

Post by physicsguy »

graemep wrote: post #217
benlivengood wrote: post #35

Open source and libre/free software are particularly vulnerable to a future where AI-generated code is ruled to be either infringing or public domain. In the former case, disentangling AI-edits from human edits could tie a project up in legal proceedings for years and projects don't have any funding to fight a copyright suit. Specifically, code that is AI-generated and subsequently modified or incorporated in the res…

Proprietary source code would not usually end up training LLMs. Unless its leaked, how would an LLM have access to it? > it would require speculative copyright owners to disassemble their binaries I wonder whether AI might be a useful tool for making that easier. If you have evidence then you can get courts to order disclosure or examination of code. > And plenty of proprietary software has public domain code in it a…

> Unless its leaked

Given the number of people on HN that say they're using for e.g. Cursor, OpenAI, etc. through work, and my experience with workplaces saying 'absolutely you can't use it', I suspect a large amount is being leaked.

Re: Define policy forbidding use of AI code generators

#220

Post by graemep »

_flux wrote: post #216
behringer wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me the professional code base with the attribution to stack overflow and I'll eat my hat.

Obviously I cannot show the code base, but when I pick a pre-existing solution from Stackoverflow or elsewhere—though it is quite rare—I do add a comment linking to the source: after all, in case of SA the discussion there might be interesting for the future maintainers of the function. I just checked, though, and the code base I'm now working with has eight stackoverflow links. Not all are even written by me, accord…

I always do to, for exactly the same reason.
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