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Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

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Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#31
post #19

This article adds no new information. We knew it is hotly debated, and we have heard both sides.

Just possibly there are people out there who haven't heard both sides and perhaps they are the intended audience for this?

And maybe some of them even read HN occasionally and are currently enjoying the article.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Purely functional expressions may not be copyrighted." Is this more than a opinion? Because you can have whole programs as a long functional expression (not that I am a fan of such a coding style, but it exists).

It is an accurate statement of the law in the US, but "purely functional expression" is not used in the sense of a mathematical function. It basically means expressions that solely reflect the way you need to do the thing to accomplish the function you are trying to achieve, without any significant creative element. For example, if I asked you to write Java code to print the sum of two integer variables named a and b…

It seems like a very blurry line for any non-trivial piece of code.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#33

Outside of AI models, copy/pasting snippets from the likes of StackOverflow is already on unsteady ground. The threshold to bother with (and win) legal fights is pretty high. AI is catalyzing some kind of slow revolution in what "ownership" is, but there doesn't seem to be any definition that would _always_ satisfy common sense. Even if github yields and adds attribution or filters on license types, there's still a m…

>Many artists the world over are rightfully furious about DALL-E and Stable Diffusion

I struggle with this one. How are these models different from the typical human creative process of:

1. look at lots of existing art to get inspiration

2. select components from several different styles & add your own flair

3. call the output an "original" painting in your own style

Of course I see the other side as well. These models are just a large multi-dimensional function of all of their input data, which means they ought to be derivative works of all of their inputs, and their outputs should thus also be derivative works of the inputs.

It feels unsatisfying (and a bit naive) to say that filtering a bunch of data through a neural network somehow clears the copyright of that original data, but on the other hand, the AI revolution depends on that interpretation.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#34

Code cannot be owned. A creative expression may be copyrighted. Purely functional expressions may not be copyrighted. The output of a trained AI is insufficiently creative to be copyrighted. Only humans can hold a copyright. Now with all that, there really isn’t anything here to get worked up over.

I'd like to hear how you decide which piece of code is creative and which isn't.

It's for a court of law to decide. GP was merely stating (what sounds like a fairly accurate) description of how copyright on code currently works in most jurisdictions.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#35
by reducing credit, copilot reduces incentive to create and publish free code. biting the hand that feeds it.

exact same problem exists with GPT3 and others.

big tech slashing and burning, ruthlessly exploiting the least empowered people in the tech economy.

neat hack.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#37
post #16

“…modify[ing] its AI model so that it traces attribution and gives credit to the original authors of the code, adding the associated copyright notices and license terms in the process…Biderman says is technologically feasible.” Is it really feasible? What does “traces attribution” even mean here? It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens that each were found throughout the input corpus. The “code” is…

Theoretically possibly, technically challenging. The training data would need to be annotated with traces, so a person would have to figure out where all of the answers came from

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#38
post #16

“…modify[ing] its AI model so that it traces attribution and gives credit to the original authors of the code, adding the associated copyright notices and license terms in the process…Biderman says is technologically feasible.” Is it really feasible? What does “traces attribution” even mean here? It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens that each were found throughout the input corpus. The “code” is…

You can just find the most matching snippets in the training data using an embedding model.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#39
post #16

“…modify[ing] its AI model so that it traces attribution and gives credit to the original authors of the code, adding the associated copyright notices and license terms in the process…Biderman says is technologically feasible.” Is it really feasible? What does “traces attribution” even mean here? It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens that each were found throughout the input corpus. The “code” is…

> It’s not emitting “code”, it’s emitting individual tokens ... The “code” is the arrangement of those tokens, but that is determined by the weighting of the whole network

This theory of operation is not borne out in reality. It's been clearly displayed that these tools are emitting verbatim copies of existing code (and its comments) in their input.

It's even being seen in image generation, where NatGeo cover images are reproduced in their entirety or where stock photo watermarks are emitted on finished images.

And so, what can be traced back to individual sources? Quite a bit it would seem.

Re: Ownership of AI-Generated Code Hotly Disputed

#40
post #33

Outside of AI models, copy/pasting snippets from the likes of StackOverflow is already on unsteady ground. The threshold to bother with (and win) legal fights is pretty high. AI is catalyzing some kind of slow revolution in what "ownership" is, but there doesn't seem to be any definition that would _always_ satisfy common sense. Even if github yields and adds attribution or filters on license types, there's still a m…

>Many artists the world over are rightfully furious about DALL-E and Stable Diffusion I struggle with this one. How are these models different from the typical human creative process of: 1. look at lots of existing art to get inspiration 2. select components from several different styles & add your own flair 3. call the output an "original" painting in your own style Of course I see the other side as well. These mode…

In a word scale. Scale matters. How is one locust different to a million? How is hand copying a manuscript (highly controlled in medieval Europe) different to a printing press. These models will and are already having a profound economic impact on the creative sectors they mimic. Whether existing law applies is a specialist question. But they're not remotely comparable from a pragmatic perspective with pieces manually created by individuals taking 'inspiration' from existing work. A closer parallel would be the industrialisation of painting duplication which is done in Chinese 'artist villages' like Dafen. It's a strange kind of equanimity to shrug while others lose their livelihood and have their self expression systematically duplicated and commodified. No kidding they're furious. That you can't empathise or find it 'naive' is your issue. What attitude would be more understandable? Resignation? Calmly retraining to work in a call centre?
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