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GitHub Copilot

copilot.github.com

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Re: GitHub Copilot

#51

So if it was trained using "source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub." was it also GPLv2? So everything generated also GPLv2?

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copilot

#53

I've been using the alpha for the past 2 weeks, and I'm blown away. Copilot guesses the exact code I want to write about one in ten times, and the rest of the time it suggests something rather good, or completely off. But when it guesses right, it feels like it's reading my mind. It's really like pair programming, even though I'm coding alone. I have a better understanding of my own code, and I tend to give better na…

How big/complicated are the functions Copilot is autocompleting for you? I'm thinking perhaps reading 10 potential candidates is actually slower and less instructive than trying to write the thing yourself.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#54

So if it was trained using "source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub." was it also GPLv2? So everything generated also GPLv2?

My guess would be that the model itself (and the training process) could have different legal requirements compared to the code it generates. The code generated by the model is probably sufficiently transformative new work that wouldn't be GPL (it's "fair use").

I suspect there could be issues on the training side, using copyrighted data for training without any form of licensing. Typically ML researchers have a pretty free-for-all attitude towards 'if I can find data, I can train models on it.'

Re: GitHub Copilot

#55

So if it was trained using "source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub." was it also GPLv2? So everything generated also GPLv2?

Its not cause the License says nothing about training. I mean every oss dev's brain would be under GPL then.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#56

So if it was trained using "source code from publicly available sources, including code in public repositories on GitHub." was it also GPLv2? So everything generated also GPLv2?

I think this would fall under any reasonable definition of fair use. If I read GPL (or proprietary) code as a human I still own code that I later write. If copyright was enforced on the outputs of machine learning models based on all content they were trained on it would be incredibly stifling to innovation. Requiring obtaining legal access to data for training but full ownership of output seems like a sensible middle ground.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#57

I've been using the alpha for the past 2 weeks, and I'm blown away. Copilot guesses the exact code I want to write about one in ten times, and the rest of the time it suggests something rather good, or completely off. But when it guesses right, it feels like it's reading my mind. It's really like pair programming, even though I'm coding alone. I have a better understanding of my own code, and I tend to give better na…

do you still go over the generated code line by line and touchup in places where it did not do a good job?

Re: GitHub Copilot

#58

I've been using the alpha for the past 2 weeks, and I'm blown away. Copilot guesses the exact code I want to write about one in ten times, and the rest of the time it suggests something rather good, or completely off. But when it guesses right, it feels like it's reading my mind. It's really like pair programming, even though I'm coding alone. I have a better understanding of my own code, and I tend to give better na…

> and the rest of the time it suggests something rather good, or completely off In what, proportion roughly?

Hard to say, really. When writing React components, Jest tests and documentation, it's often not very far. I found it off when writing HTML markup (which is hard to describe with words).

Re: GitHub Copilot

#59
This is very impressive!

OpenAI’s tech opens an ethical Pandora’s box:

1. It’s clear that the raw inputs to all of OpenAI’s outputs originated with real, human creativity.

2. So, in a sense, OpenAI is laundering creativity. It reads in creative works, does complicated (and, yes, groundbreaking) transformations, and produces an output that is hard to trace to any particular source.

3. Yet, isn’t that effectively what human brains do too? Perhaps OpenAI lacks the capacity for true invention, but I’d argue that most people live their whole lives without a meaningful creative contribution as well.

All told, I don’t have a good framework for thinking about the ethics here. So instead, I’ll simply say:

Wow.

Re: GitHub Copilot

#60
Hi HN, we've been building GitHub Copilot together with the incredibly talented team at OpenAI for the last year, and we're so excited to be able to show it off today.

Hundreds of developers are using it every day internally, and the most common reaction has been the head exploding emoji. If the technical preview goes well, we'll plan to scale this up as a paid product at some point in the future.

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