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GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
391–400 of 473 posts
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#392I agree that this is different from humans learning to code from examples and reproducing some individual snippets. However, I disagree with the author’s argument that it's because of humans’ ability to abstract. We actually know nothing about the AI’s ability to abstract. The real difference is that if one human can learn to code from public sources, then so can anyone else. Nobody is explicitly barred from accessin…
So it’s using a massive-scale public good (non-rivalrous and non-exclusionary access to source code) to create a private product that is rivalrous in the software labour pool? Or is the problem just that it’s not open-access?
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#393One interesting aspect, that I thing will make it difficult for GitHub to argue and justify its not a a license violation would be the answer to the following question: Was Copilot trained using Microsoft internal source code or will it be in the future ? As GitHub is a Microsoft company and OpenAI although a non-profit just got a massive one billion investment from Microsoft (presumably not for free), will it start…
The "because" in your last bit is a huge leap. It wasn't trained on internal Microsoft code because the training set is publicly available code. It has nothing to do with whether or not it suggests exactly identical, functionally identical, or similar code. MS internal isn't publicly available. Copilot is trained on publicly available code.
You stated a fact "Copilot is trained on publicly available code".
The question (and implication) is: why not train it on MS internal code, if the claim that the output isn't license-incompatible is true.
If the output doesn't conflict with any open-source license (ie. it springs into existence from general principles, not from "copying" licensed code -- then MS-internal (in fact, any closed-source code) should be open-season.
I can imagine a few of the non-obvious segments of code I've written being "recognizable" methods to solve certain problems. And, they are certainly licensed (GPL + Commercial, in my case).
I think, at the very least, that a set of AIs should be trained on different compatible sets of code, eg. GPL, AGPL, BSD, etc. Then, you could select what amount of license-overlap is compatible with your project.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#394Just wanted to say that everything is ultimately "derivative", and this literal ordinary meaning differs from the legal meaning, which is informed by context, policy and what makes sense.
Where do you draw the line? That's for the courts to decide!
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#395One interesting aspect, that I thing will make it difficult for GitHub to argue and justify its not a a license violation would be the answer to the following question: Was Copilot trained using Microsoft internal source code or will it be in the future ? As GitHub is a Microsoft company and OpenAI although a non-profit just got a massive one billion investment from Microsoft (presumably not for free), will it start…
It probably wasn't because Github is treated as a separate company by Microsoft. Literally people need to quit Microsoft and join Github to take a role at Github.
That's an interesting employment detail, but what does it have to do with the other parts of the organization? I happen to know that they work together on security and contract areas, and it wouldn't surprise me if there were other similar arrangements in place.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not limited to similar or identical code. The issue applies to anything 'derived' from copyrighted code. The issue is simply most visible with similar or identical code. If you have code from an independent origin, this issue doesn't apply. That's how clean room designs bypass copyright. Similarly if the upstream code waives its copyright in certain types of derived works (compiler/runtime exemptions), it doesn'…
So if you work on an open source project and learn some techniques from it, and then in your day job you use a similar technique, is that a copyright violation? Basically does reading GPL code pollute your brain and make it impossible to work for pay later? If so you should only ever read BSD code, not GPL.
Microsoft appears to believe this (or maybe just MacBU) because I've met employees who tell me they're not allowed to read any public code including Stack Overflow answers.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#397Earlier 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?
> When AI inevitably outperforms humans on almost all tasks Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that even possible? I kind of thought that AI is just set of fancy statistical models that requires some (preferably huge) data set in order to infer the best fit. These models can only outperform humans in scenarios where the parameters are well defined. Many (most?) tasks humans regularly perform don’t have clean and well de…
> Correct me if I’m wrong, but is that even possible?
It's not possible because of comparative advantage - someone being better than you at literally everything isn't enough to stop you from having a job, because they have better things to do than replace you. Plus "being a human" is a task that people can be employed at.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
There might be limit to how efficiently a general purpose machine can perform a specific task, similar to the Heisenberg uncertainty principal in quantum physics. That is to say, there might be a natural law that dictates that the more generic a machine is, the more power it requires to perform specific tasks. Our brains are kind of specialized. If you want to build a machine that outperforms humans in a single task,…
We know it’s possible for a brain to outperform most other brains. Think Einstein et al. A smart AI can be replicated(unlike super-smart human), so we can get it outperform human race, on average. That’d be enough to render people obsolete.
Do these theoretical AIs have desires? Then they're customers, so you're not unemployed.
If not, do they require inputs to run? If so then you can provide them.
If not, then you apparently don't need a job since they can provide everything for you.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
The very concept of ownership is a social artifact, and as such, is not immutable. What does it mean for the 0.1% to own all the means of production? They can't physically possess them all. So what it means in practice is that our society recognizes the abstract notion of property ownership, distinct from physical possession or use - basically, the right to deny other people the use of that property, or allow it cond…
The problem I see is that once the pitchforks come out, society will lose decades of progress. If we're somewhat close to the techno-utopia at the start, we won't be at the end. Who's going to rebuild on the promise that the next generation won't need to work? Revolutions aren't great at building a sense of real community; there's a good reason that "successful" communist uprisings result in totalitarian monarchies.…
I suspect "the 0.01% own and run all production by themselves" isn't possible in the real world. My evidence is that this is the plot of Atlas Shrugged.
If they're not trading with the rest of the world, it doesn't mean they're the only ones with an economy. It means there's two different ones. And the one with the 99.9% is probably better, larger ones usually are.
Re: GitHub Copilot as open source code laundering?
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
64-bit floats should be fine; I think that tweet is only sort-of correct. The problem with floats-storing-money is (a) you have to know how many digits of precision you want (e.g. cents, dollars, a tenth of a cent), and (b) you need to watch out if you're adding values together. Even if certain values can't be represented exactly, that's ok, because you'd want to round to two decimal places before doing anything. Is…
Storing money as float is always a bad decision. Source: been working for several banks and faced many of such bugs.
Pretty common in financial modeling, which I'm told is all done in Excel.