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Part of my code makes Copilot crash

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Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#251

Post by throwaway290 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #240
Mo3 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Small children do not take hormones or have gender related surgery. Adolescents under medical oversight can. These treatments have very low regret rates and reduce suicides.

Ehm... Sorry to break it to you, but people who think they were born the wrong sex are increasingly treated with hormones before the onset of puberty (with puberty-delaying treatments it's kind of the point). Not arguing whether it's good or bad, but by definition they are children at that point in time.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#252

Post by captainmuon »

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.…

I don't get the whole discussion. There are just many different models of gender. Its like particles vs waves. In one model, there are only two genders, in another five. There are those who say gender is culture and sex is real, and those who say sex is constructed, too. Some models describe reality better than others, some are useful, some are harmful. But nobody can or should stop you from thinking about reality with the model of your choice.

If I were Microsoft, I would post a shrugie and say copilot offers arbitrary responses based on the actual code it reads; it is not supposed to be "correct" or good or fair, but just follow what it sees other people do.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#253

Post by mlyle »

smsm42 wrote: post #244
mlyle wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You're telling me if a short, bald, overweight guy with a beard likes to be referred to as a tall, thin blonde woman with lustrous hair - "we" immediately stop seeing his height, his lack of hair, his girth and his beard? I don't know who that "we" is but that'd require some major training in delusion, Mr. O'Brien. That's straw-man and snark across the board. If that short person wants to be called "she" and to sto…

> Do you insist on pointing that out to my face repeatedly If it's not relevant, then of course there's no point of pointing that out. But if we are talking about a task that requires visual acuity, and I point out that you seem to have an issue in that department, then you may feel bad, but that doesn't change the facts. And if the task does require knowing that, then your feeling bad does not overcome that. For exa…

> Note that I am a jerk if I refuse requests that you consider reasonable.

Note that's not quite what I said: I said that if you refuse requests that I consider reasonable, that I will think you're a jerk.

> I may ignore it when it's irrelevant, but if it becomes relevant

Like, what, if she asks you on a date? Otherwise, largely, none of your business. And if it's the date thing, I'd encourage you to decline kindly.

> But if we are talking about a task that requires visual acuity, and I point out that you seem to have an issue in that department

Then you'd actually be wrong. It's largely cosmetic.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#254

Post by Mo3 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #240
Mo3 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Small children do not take hormones or have gender related surgery. Adolescents under medical oversight can. These treatments have very low regret rates and reduce suicides.

No post body was provided.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#255

Post by captainmuon »

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…

Detecting black faces correctly is one thing; obviously if a system can't do that it's an issue and it shows that the people making the system were biased.

But something like Copilot or DALL-E? If you ask DALL-E for a doctor and it rarely shows black people (or women), then it is neither racist nor broken. Our society is broken. There are not enough people in that job that are not white and male. Or they are not represented enough. I think there is value in AI that honestly reflects society, because it makes this discrepancy harder to ignore.

People imagined AI would be this benevolent, neutral, wise thing that would maybe be a bit naive but not have our human biases. But it turns out there is no "morally neutral". It will just reflect what you put into it.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#256

Post by xupybd »

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.…

There is a safe version of gender. Grammatical gender is, for now, binary and as far as I'm aware not offensive to most.

But I agree you can't avoid offending people. The world is nuts everything is offensive to someone.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#257

Post by atq2119 »

pseudalopex wrote: post #230
lmm wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I never had a reason to call people ugly behind their backs. Calling Romani Romani not a word they don't like isn't dishonest, strange, or rude. I don't know anything about the birth genitals of most people I dine with.

> I don't know anything about the birth genitals of most people I dine with.

Unless you mostly participate in statistically unusual social circles, that's plain incorrect.

The truth is that you can't know anything about their birth genitals with certainty. However, unless you have some unusual condition that prevents you from perceiving sex-associated characteristics, then if somebody looks male/female to you, you know with very high confidence what their birth genitals were. One can quibble about the exact level of confidence, and it depends on what social circles you self-select into (because that affects your base rates), but for most people the certainty is fairly close to 100%.

Of course that may not be the lived experience of people who are trans themselves, because of who they associate with, and that may contribute to some of the unnecessary vitriol on the topic

In any case, what matters is what you do with that knowledge.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#258

Post by coffeeblack »

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.…

It’s just following the old advice not to talk about religion.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#259

Post by duskwuff »

EddySchauHai wrote: post #128
moyix wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, there is in fact a bad word filter in GitHub Copilot. When it was first released, the list was stored client-side in obfuscated form and I had a lot of fun decoding it: https://twitter.com/moyix/status/1433254293352730628 The Register wrote about it too: https://www.theregister.com/2021/09/02/github_copilot_banned... They have since moved the bad word list server-side to prevent people from figuring out what's o…

Hahaha some of those banned words are very mild. Wuzzocks, numbnuts, and rodgering?

It's a hell of a list. Everything from seriously offensive slurs which I won't repeat here, to phrases which are much sillier than offensive like "banana bender" or "bearded clam", to words that are simply descriptive like "pornographic", "immigrant", or "race".

(Because I had to look it up too: "banana bender" is a humorous term for an inhabitant of Queensland, Australia. It doesn't appear to be considered offensive at all.)

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#260

Post by xupybd »

captainmuon wrote: post #252
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.…

I don't get the whole discussion. There are just many different models of gender. Its like particles vs waves. In one model, there are only two genders, in another five. There are those who say gender is culture and sex is real, and those who say sex is constructed, too. Some models describe reality better than others, some are useful, some are harmful. But nobody can or should stop you from thinking about reality wi…

>>Nobody can or should stop you from thinking about reality with the model of your choice.

While I agree with you, that is very much the game that is being played here. We have competing world views and one way to help a world view dominate is to play a linguistic war. That was the point of Newspeak in 1984 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newspeak). If you control the language such that competing ideas are instantly taboo just by the words required to describe them you can stop people from promulgating those ideas. So you gain ground without ever having to debate the new ideas.

This has happened in many countries when one religion dominated. Western society was starting to get to the point where it taboos were being shed and ideas could win based on their merit. Sadly we're regressing back to a society controlled by dogma rather than an open exchange of ideas. I suspect this is the normal state of human societies, we fluctuate between open and closed societies.

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