All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot • Hacker News Board

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#481

Post by adverbly » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

AaronFriel wrote: post #193

keonix wrote: post #185

If the training set contains verbatim (A)GPL code does this mean that Copilot also should be distributed by Microsoft under GPL? Because without it Copilot (as it is distributed by Microsoft) couldn't be built, wouldn't it make it a derivative work of GPL'd code (and obviously every other license)? I see a lot of people comparing human learning to machine learning in the comments, but there is a huge difference - we…

No, see Authors Guild v. Google. Even without a license or permission, fair use permits the mass scanning of books, the storage of the content of those books, and rendering verbatim snippets of those books. The Google Books site is not a derivative work of the millions of authors they copied from, and if they did copy any coincidentally GPL, AGPL, or creative commons copyleft work, the fair use exception applies befo…

This was a good point. Really enjoying this discussion. Interesting stuff.

I'm really out of my depth in giving my own opinion here, but I'm not sure that either the "distribution != derivative" characterization, or that "parsing GPL => derivative of GPL" really locks this thing down. The bit that I can't follow with the "distribution != derivative" argument is that the copilot is actually performing distribution rather than "design". I would have said that copilot's core function is generating implementations, which to me does not seem like distribution. This isn't a "search" product, and it's not trying to be one. It is attempting to do design work, and I could see a case where that distinction matters.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#482

Post by SXX » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:11 PM UTC

albertzeyer wrote: post #479

So, when a human reads public code on the Internet (no matter the licence), and gains knowledge, learns (updates the synaptic weights of the brain), and then makes (indirectly) use of that gained knowledge for further work, how is this different to this case?

It's no different, but if human reads copyrighted proprietary code and then reproduces part of it exactly he have good chance to get into huge legal trouble.

On other hand said AI have no idea of who the code belongs to and it's able to reproduce it perfectly.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#483

Post by IgorPartola » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:12 PM UTC

keonix wrote: post #293

IgorPartola wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I read a GPL implementation of a linked list and then write my own linked list implementation, was my neural network in my brain a derivative work of the GPL code?

Sure it is, you brain is not software though

So as long as I read GPL code, then rewrite it from memory and feed it to copilot to train it I can unGPL anything?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#484

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:13 PM UTC

albertzeyer wrote: post #479

So, when a human reads public code on the Internet (no matter the licence), and gains knowledge, learns (updates the synaptic weights of the brain), and then makes (indirectly) use of that gained knowledge for further work, how is this different to this case?

[deleted]

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#485

Post by nowherebeen » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

albertzeyer wrote: post #479

So, when a human reads public code on the Internet (no matter the licence), and gains knowledge, learns (updates the synaptic weights of the brain), and then makes (indirectly) use of that gained knowledge for further work, how is this different to this case?

The difference is intent. When Github reads public code, their only intent is to profit from it. Depending on the license, that's a violation.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#486

Post by xsmasher » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:14 PM UTC

mysterydip wrote: post #187

schneidmaster wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a decent bit of caselaw indicating that computers reading and using a copyrighted work simply "don't count" in terms of copyright infringement -- only humans can infringe copyright. This article[0] does a pretty good job of summarizing the rationale that the courts have provided. My (non-lawyer) take is that GitHub is pushing this just half a step farther -- if computers can consume copyrighted material, and…

Makes me wonder what would happen if a similar thing was done with books. If I train an AI on all the texts of Tom Clancy, or Stephen King, or every Star Wars novel, and the books it generates every so often produce paragraphs verbatim from one of those sources, would copyright owners be up in arms? What would the distinction be between the code case and the text case?

This will surely happen within the next few years; but if the "new work" contains a full paragraph from an existing novel the copyright hammer would come down hard.

Maybe it needs to be paired with another network / hunk of code that checks for verbatim copying?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#487

Post by SXX » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:16 PM UTC

Hamuko wrote: post #176

surfingdino wrote: post #62

I am not surprised given who the owner of GitHub is. Now, let's assume for a while that a private repo is left marked as public by mistake and Copilot regurgitates it... Lawyers are going to have fun with that one.

The worse scenario for GitHub is when a leak is published on GitHub. It's not like it hasn't happened before. https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/8/16992626/apple-github-dmca...

There actually tons of unlicensed and wrongly licensed code on GitHub right now that being accidentally leaked by employees of many companies.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#488

Post by IgorPartola » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

johndough wrote: post #305

IgorPartola wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you view GPL code with your browser would that mean that your browser now has to be GPL as well? In the sense that copilot is not much different than a browser for Stack Overflow with some automation, why would it need to be GPLed? Your own code on the other hand…

For sake of discussion, it would be clearer to split copilot code (not derived from GPL'd works) and the actual weights of the neural network at the heart of copilot (derived from GPL'd works via algorithmic means). For your browser analogy, that would mean that the "browser" is the copilot code, while the weights would be some data derived from GPL'd works, perhaps a screenshot of the browser showing the code. I'd t…

As I understand it the things copilot tries to do is automate the loop of “Google your problem, find a Stack Overflow answer, paste in the code from there into my editor”. In that sense, the burden of whether the license of the code being copy pasted is on the person who answered the SO question and on me. If this literally was what copilot did, nobody would bat an eye that some code it produced was GPL or any other license because it wouldn’t be copilot’s problem.

No let’s substitute a different database of for the code that isn’t SO. It doesn’t really matter if that database is a literal RDBMS, a giant git repo or is encoded as a neural net. All copilot is going to do is perform a search in that database, find a result and paste it in. The burden of licensing is still on me to not use GPL code and possibly on the person hosting the database.

The gotcha here is that copilot’s database is a neural network. If you take GPL code and feed it as training data to a neural network to create essentially a lookup table along with non-GPL code did you just create a derived work? It is unclear to me whether you did or not. In particular, can they neural network itself be considered “source code”?

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#489

Post by IgorPartola » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

dtech wrote: post #282

IgorPartola wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you view GPL code with your browser would that mean that your browser now has to be GPL as well? In the sense that copilot is not much different than a browser for Stack Overflow with some automation, why would it need to be GPLed? Your own code on the other hand…

If you use your browser to copy some GPL code into your project your project must now be GPL as well. So following your own argument, even if Copilot is allowed, using it still risks you falling under GPL

My point exactly. Copilot is innocent in that case just like the browser.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#490

Post by leventov » Thu, Jul 08, 2021, 8:23 PM UTC

nickvincent wrote: post #354

Regardless of how the (potentially very impactful) debate about licensing and copyright plays out, I think many here would agree this constitutes an "exploitation" of labor, at least in a mild sense. Optimistically, Copilot could be a wake up call for thinking more deeply about how the winnings of data-dependent technologies (ultimately, dependent on the labor of people who do things like write open source code) are…

There will be just a short transition period. In 10 years, AI will be writing most of code, and in 20 years - nearly all code. People will do only architecture/business analysis.

No more "exploitation" of labor.