If I recall correctly, it has been already determined that using proprietary data to train a machine learning system is not a violation of intellectual property.
GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
241–250 of 473 posts
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#242Earlier quoted context omitted.
This would be the demise of the human race. I’m not entirely opposed to that, though. When AI inevitably outperforms humans on almost all tasks, who am I to say humans deserve to be given those tasks?
In this case we should be able to work less and enjoy the benefits of automation. We just need to live in an economic system where the economic value is captured by the people at large, and not a minority that owns capital.
Careful now, that sounds like socialism!
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#243What happens when someone puts code up on GitHub with a license that says "This code may not be used for training a code generation model"? - Is GitHub actually going to pay any attention to that, or are they just going to ingest the code and thus violate its license anyway? - If they go ahead and violate the code's license, what are the legal repercussions for the resulting model? Can a model be "un-trained" from a…
I would bet this as applicable as the Facebook posts of my parents friends something like, 'All my content on this page is mine alone and I expressly forbid Facebook INC usage of it for any purpose.'
NO COPYRIGHT INTENDED
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#244Should we be changing our open source licenses to explicitly prevent training such systems using our code?
That would be a legal no-op. Either their use is covered by copyright and they are violating your license, or it isn't covered by copyright and then any constraints that your license sets are meaningless.
Licenses hold no power outside of that granted to it by things being copyrighted by default.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#245The tone of the responses here is absurd. Guys, be grateful for some progress. Instead of having to retype boilerplate code, your productivity is now enhanced by having a system that can do it for you. This is primarily about reducing the need to re-type total boilerplate and/or copy/paste from Stackoverflow. If you were to let some of the people here run things we'd never have any form of progress with anything ever…
> Instead of having to retype boilerplate code, your productivity is now enhanced by having a system that can do it for you
We already invented something for that a couple decades ago, and it's called a "library". And unlike this thing, libraries don't launder appropriation of the public commons with total disregard for those who have actually built that commons.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#246Earlier quoted context omitted.
Without weighing in on the overall question of “is this a license violation”, you’ve created a false dichotomy. “GitHub included Microsoft proprietary code in the training set because they view the results as non-derivative” and “GitHub didn’t include Microsoft proprietary code because they view the results as derivative” are clearly not the only options. They could have not included Microsoft internal code because i…
Or: they used the entire open source corpus because they thought it was free for the taking, and when people point out that it is not (that there are licenses) they spin that (claim that only 0.1% of output is directly copied, but that would mean 100 lines in 100k program) and pass any risk onto the user (saying it is their responsibility to vet any code they produce). So they aren't saying that users are in the clea…
> 100 lines in 100k program
The intention is autocomplete boilerplate, not write a kernel.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#247Earlier quoted context omitted.
Alternatively, wait for co-pilot to add support for C++, then start writing an operating system with Win32-compatible API using co-pilot. There is plenty of leaked Windows source code on Github, so chances are that co-pilot would give quite good suggestions for implementing a Win32-compatible kernel. Then watch and see if Microsoft will try to argue that you are violating their copyright using code generated by their…
Oh man, that got meta super fast. Its like a mobius strip!
It can always get more meta.
For example, the AI tool that Microsoft's lawyers use ("Co-Counsel"), will be filing the DMCA notices and subsequenct lawsuits against Co-Pilot generated code.
This will result in a massive caseload for the courts, so naturally they'll turn to their AI tool ("DocketPlus Pro") to adjudicate all the cases.
Only thing left is to enter these AI-generated judgements into Etherium smart contracts. Then it's just computers suing other computers, and being ordered to send the fruits of their hashing to one another.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#248I think copyright is a problem for GPL-like licenses. They should have restricted the training data to MIT/BSD-like. Anyway, there is another problem that is patents and is huger, much huger. I think the Apache license has a provision about patents, but most of other licenses may have code that has patents and if the AI generate something similar it may be included in the patent.
MIT/BSD-like would still require attribution, which they are also not doing.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#249If it's trained with GPL licensed code, doesn't that mean the network they use includes it somewhat? Then, someone could sue that their networks must be GPL licensed too, right?
Yes, the neural network would constitute a derived work.
Actually no because it’s a “transformative use”. This is how search engines are allowed to show snippets and thumbnails.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#250I think this would fall under any reasonable definition of fair use. If I read GPL (or proprietary) code as a human I still own code that I later write. If copyright was enforced on the outputs of machine learning models based on all content they were trained on it would be incredibly stifling to innovation. Requiring obtaining legal access to data for training but full ownership of output seems like a sensible middle ground.
(Reposting my comment from yesterday)