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The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

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Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#271

Post by gitaarik »

dmezzetti wrote: post #218
LtWorf wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As someone who has spent a fair amount of time developing open source software, I will say I genuinely dislike copyleft and GPL. GPL: Help the user MIT: Help some random company screw the users and save money not hiring people. Then again I see you're a founder at some AI company so I strongly doubt your motives and statement.

I've spent years building something for free with no expectation of anything in return. Perhaps someone just doesn't believe in the GPL and has no ulterior motive for that.

What part don't you "believe" exactly? It's just a license with it's particular use cases. It's up to you whether you find the use case appropriate in your circumstance. It depends on what your goal is.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#272

Post by iso1631 »

pclmulqdq wrote: post #124
iso1631 wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How much do you pay them? If the GPL license didn't exist, and instead you just relying on copyright, then that's an injunction. You have to stop using the code you "stole" and pay reparations. In UK law, if you distribute copyright material in the course of a business you can be facing 10 years in prison and an unlimited fine. Sure you can't get them to agree to the GPL, they could simply stop distributing and then…

You pay them an amount determined by the court or your settlement, and you also have to stop using the code. This is how everything works. Corporations can't go to prison.

> Corporations can't go to prison.

A major problem with the western world, total lack of accountability

For GPL a court could fine them the value of their company, or settle by releasing the code. A court won't but that's because the system is built to protect moneyed entities over individuals.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#273

Post by dzaima »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #245
dzaima wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In said hypothetical world, though, the whatever-driver would also have been written by LLMs; and, if the printer or whatever is non-trivial and made by a typical large company, many LLM instances with a sizable amount of token spending over a long period of time. So getting your own LLM rewrite to an equivalent point (or, rather, less buggy as that's the whole point!) would be rather expensive; at the absolute very…

Now I'm kind of curious if you give an LLM the disassembly of a proprietary firmware blob and tell it to turn it into human-readable source code, how good is it at that? You could probably even train one to do that in particular. Take existing open source code and its assembly representations as training data and then treat it like a language translation task. Use the context to guess what the variable names were bef…

The most difficult parts of getting readable code would be dealing with inlined functions and otherwise-duplicated code from macros or similar, and dealing with in-memory structure layouts; both pretty complicated very-global tasks. (never mind naming things, but perhaps LLMs have a good shot at that)

That said, chatgpt currently seems to fail even basic things - completely missed the `thrM` path being possible here: https://chatgpt.com/share/69296a8e-d620-800b-8c25-15f4260c78... https://dzaima.github.io/paste/#0jZJNTsMwEIX3OcWoSFWCqrhN0wb... and that's only basic bog-standard branching, no in-memory structures or stack usage (such trivial problems could be handled by using an actual proper disassembler before throwing an LLM at that wall, but of course that only solves the easy part)

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#274

Post by palata »

chii wrote: post #263
palata wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then we would need a way to prove that some code was LLM generated, right? Like if I copy-paste GPL-licenced code, the way you realise that I copy-pasted it is because 1) you can see it and 2) the GPL-licenced code exists. But when code is LLM generated, it is "new". If I claim I wrote it, how would you oppose that?

you could have the inverse - proof that the code was _not_ LLM generated. It's like a mark of origin/country of origin for produce.

How would you do it? How can you prove that the message you sent was not LLM generated?

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#275

Post by AnthonyMouse »

throwaway290 wrote: post #255
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the inverse. Mass surveillance is bad so it should be banned, vs. using AI to thwart proprietary lock-in is good and so shouldn't be banned. But also, is the inverse even wrong? If some store has a local CCTV that keeps recordings for a month in case someone robs them, there is no central feed/database and no one else can get them without a warrant, that's not really that objectionable. If Amazon pipes the fee…

> If some store has a local CCTV By "everywhere" I obviously don't mean "on your private property", I mean "everywhere" as in "on every street corner and so on". If people are OK with their government putting CCTVs on every lamp post on the promise that they are "secure" and "not used to aggregate data and track people" and "only with warrant" then it's kind of "I told you so" when (not if) all of those things turn o…

> By "everywhere" I obviously don't mean "on your private property", I mean "everywhere" as in "on every street corner and so on".

If they're on each person's private property then they're on every street corner and so on. The distinction you're really after is between decentralized and centralized control/access, which is rather the point.

> It's kind of bizarre to see people thinking these LLM operators will be somehow on the side of freedom and copyleft considering what they are doing.

You're conflating the operators with the thing itself.

LLMs exist and nobody can un-exist them now because they're really just code and data. The only question is, are they a thing that does what you want because there are good published models that anybody can run on their own hardware, or are the only up-to-date ones corporate and censored and politically compromised by every clodpoll who can stir up a mob?

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#276

Post by chii »

palata wrote: post #274
chii wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you could have the inverse - proof that the code was _not_ LLM generated. It's like a mark of origin/country of origin for produce.

How would you do it? How can you prove that the message you sent was not LLM generated?

The same way a current product advertises itself as hand-crafted, or organic, etc. Just pure trust. And if you can charge a higher price because this is considered valuable by your customers, then you get to sustain it as a business.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#277

Post by throwaway290 »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275
throwaway290 wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If some store has a local CCTV By "everywhere" I obviously don't mean "on your private property", I mean "everywhere" as in "on every street corner and so on". If people are OK with their government putting CCTVs on every lamp post on the promise that they are "secure" and "not used to aggregate data and track people" and "only with warrant" then it's kind of "I told you so" when (not if) all of those things turn o…

> By "everywhere" I obviously don't mean "on your private property", I mean "everywhere" as in "on every street corner and so on". If they're on each person's private property then they're on every street corner and so on. The distinction you're really after is between decentralized and centralized control/access, which is rather the point. > It's kind of bizarre to see people thinking these LLM operators will be som…

You really try hard to misunderstand it. A small shop has own cctv to catch intruders = one thing. Local company installing cctv everywhere = different thing. In practice they can be both supplied by one company, centralized and unified and sold and fighting ANY cctv is ultimately the winning move.

> LLMs exist and nobody can un-exist them now because they're really just code and data

"Malware exists and nobody can unexist it now because it's just code and data"

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#278

Post by lan321 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #221
quotemstr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what? I can probably produce parts of the header from memory. Doesn't mean my brain is GPLed.

> Doesn't mean my brain is GPLed. It would be if they could get away with it. The likes of Disney would delete your memories of their films if they could get away with it. If you want to enjoy the film, you should have to pay them for the privilege, not recall the last time you watched it.

Imma pitch them a cinema exit turnstile with a barcode reader and a bat. You pay the retention tax or you get bonked. Once they see the ROI we can expand service via collaboration with services like Uber to ensure equal experience quality at home.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#279

Post by dmezzetti »

gitaarik wrote: post #271
dmezzetti wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've spent years building something for free with no expectation of anything in return. Perhaps someone just doesn't believe in the GPL and has no ulterior motive for that.

What part don't you "believe" exactly? It's just a license with it's particular use cases. It's up to you whether you find the use case appropriate in your circumstance. It depends on what your goal is.

I've said it multiple times. I don't want to force those who use my projects to have to share their code unless they want to. But if someone wants to use GPL that's up to them. It's a choice.

Re: The current state of the theory that GPL propagates to AI models

#280

Post by AnthonyMouse »

throwaway290 wrote: post #277
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> By "everywhere" I obviously don't mean "on your private property", I mean "everywhere" as in "on every street corner and so on". If they're on each person's private property then they're on every street corner and so on. The distinction you're really after is between decentralized and centralized control/access, which is rather the point. > It's kind of bizarre to see people thinking these LLM operators will be som…

You really try hard to misunderstand it. A small shop has own cctv to catch intruders = one thing. Local company installing cctv everywhere = different thing. In practice they can be both supplied by one company, centralized and unified and sold and fighting ANY cctv is ultimately the winning move. > LLMs exist and nobody can un-exist them now because they're really just code and data "Malware exists and nobody can u…

> A small shop has own cctv to catch intruders = one thing. Local company installing cctv everywhere = different thing.

But that's the thing you were implying couldn't be distinguished. Every small shop having its own CCTV is different than one company having cameras everywhere, even if they both result cameras all over the place.

> "Malware exists and nobody can unexist it now because it's just code and data"

Which is accurate. Even if you tried to ban malware, or LLMs, they would still be produced by China et al. And malware is by definition bad, so you're also omitting the thing that matters again, which is that we should not ban the LLMs that aren't bad.

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