281–290 of 806 posts
This could be terribly fun.
In this way, making sure I'm not writing proprietary code is important.
Fortunately it looks like Copilot only uses open repositories so that's good.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's an entirely plausible explanation, but it doesn't mean that Microsoft has any less of a legal nightmare on their hands.
I'm not really sure what I think about this. How responsible should Microsoft be for someone's badly licensed code on their platform? If they somehow had the ability to ban projects using stolen snippets of code, I don't think I'd dare to host my hobby projects there. If you can't trust that the code in a project is compatible with the license of the project then the only option I see is that copilot cannot exist. I…
That's a really hard undersell of responsibility on the part of Microsoft/Github.
It seems as though they did approximately zero work to verify any of the code wasn't infringing. Things they could have tried but apparently didn't:
1) Ask developers to opt-in to copilot scanning of their repositories, and alongside that have them certify that they hold copyright over all lines of code included in the repository.
2) Use a training dataset of only public repositories listed under applicable pre-identified licensing schemes, from established groups. e.g.: *bsd licensed code from the various BSD OSes.
3) Sought out examples from standard libraries in other programming languages with suitable licenses.
It seems like they did nothing and just hoped. I can't see how anyone would try to rely on this thing in a commercial context after its proven to do this over and over. The well has been poisoned.
I think people may be drastically over-valuing their code. If it was emitting an entire meaningful product, that would be something else. But it’s emitting nuts and bolts. If the issue is more specifically copyright infringement, then leverage the legal apparatus in place for that. Their lawyers might listen better. This is not a strongly held opinion and if you disagree I would love to hear your constructive thought…
Please refrain yourself from this kind of blatant gaslighting. You're not the one to assess its value or usefulness and your point is at most tangential to the issue. The problem is that the model systematically took non-public domain code without any permits from the author, not whether it's useful or not. It's worth to hear this complaint and Copilot team should be more accountable for this problem since this could lead to more serious copyright infringement fights for its users.
I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…
An accusation of hypocrisy is not an argument ; at least not a relevant one.
I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…
Your post is a good example of the tu quoque fallacy[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_quoque
I didn’t intend to argue anything or draw any conclusions. Just making an observation based on conversations with friends and coworkers.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When Joe Rando plays a song from 1640 on a violin he gets a copyright claim on Youtube. When Jane Rando uses devtools to check a website source code she gets sued. When Microsoft steals all code on their platform and sells it, they get lauded. When "Open" AI steals thousands of copyrighted images and sells them, they get lauded. I am skeptical of imaginary property myself, but fuck this one set of rules for the poor,…
> one set of rules for the poor, another set of rules for the masses Presumably by "the masses" you meant "the large corporations"? Usually, "the masses" means "the common people" ... i.e. not much different from "the poor." If you meant corporations, I'm 100% behind this comment.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a programmer who has written extensively on my blog and HN against Copilot. I am also not a hypocrite; I do not like DALL-E or Stable Diffusion either. As a sibling comment implies, these AI tools give more power to people who control data, i.e., big companies or wealthy people, while at the same time, they take power away from individuals. Copilot is bad for society. DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are bad for soci…
> while at the same time, they take power away from individuals. Stable Diffusion and DALL-E give a ton of power to individuals, hence why they are popular. It feels like you're doing a cost analysis instead of a cost-benefit analysis, i.e. you're only looking at the negatives. It's a bit like saying cars are bad because they give more power to the big companies who sell them + put horse and buggy operators out of a…
The big difference is that cars were a tool that helped regular people by being a force multiplier. Stable Diffusion and DALL-E are not force multipliers in the same way. Sure, you may now produce images that you couldn't before, but there are far fewer profitable uses for images than for cars. Images don't materially affect the world, but cars can.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am a programmer who has written extensively on my blog and HN against Copilot. I am also not a hypocrite; I do not like DALL-E or Stable Diffusion either. As a sibling comment implies, these AI tools give more power to people who control data, i.e., big companies or wealthy people, while at the same time, they take power away from individuals. Copilot is bad for society. DALL-E and Stable Diffusion are bad for soci…
Obviously this is a matter of philosophy. I am using Copilot as an assistant, and for that it works out very nicely. It's fancy code completion. I don't know who is trying to use this to write non-trivial code but that's as bad an idea as trying to pass off writing AI "prompts" as a type of engineering. These things are tools to make more involved things. You're not going to be remembered for all the AI art you promp…
Yes, the way Copilot was trained was morally questionable, but probably legaly fine (Github terms of service).
There is no doubt the result is extremely helpful though.
I’ve noticed that people tend to disapprove of AI trained on their profession’s data, but are usually indifferent or positive about other applications of AI. For example, I know artists who are vehemently against DALL-E, Stable Diffusion, etc. and regard it as stealing, but they view Copilot and GPT-3 as merely useful tools. I also know software devs who are extremely excited about AI art and GPT-3 but are outraged b…
I, with my software developer hat, am not excited by AI. Not a bit, honestly. Esp. about these big models trained on huge amount of data, without any consent. Let me be perfectly clear. I'm all for the tech. The capabilities are nice. The thing I'm strongly against is training these models on any data without any consent. GPT-3 is OK, training it with public stuff regardless of its license is not. Copilot is OK, trai…
That’s actually fine (kind of the idea of specifying a license). What is not fine is using that code in non-GPL licensed code.