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All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

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Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#551

Post by fleddr »

To me, the particular use case and whether it is fair use or not, is of minor interest. A far more pressing matter is at hand: AI centralization and monopolization.

Take Google as an example, running Google Photos for free for several years. And now that this has sucked in a trillion photos, the AI job is done, and they likely have the best image recognition AI in existence.

Which is of course still peanuts compared to training a super AI on the entire web.

My point here is that only companies the size of Google and Microsoft have the resources to do this type of planetary scale AI. They can afford the super expensive AI engineers, have the computing power and own the data or will forcefully get access to it. We will even freely give it to them.

Any "lesser" AI produced from smaller companies trying to compete are obsolete, and the better one accelerates away. There is no second-best in AI, only winners.

If we predict that ultimately AI will change virtually every aspect of society, these companies will become omnipresent, "everything companies". God companies.

As per usual, it will be packaged as an extra convenience for you. And you will embrace it and actively help realize this scenario.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#552

Post by saati »

nojito wrote: post #356
tyre wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Copilot is not doing what your example does. If Github had a service that automatically mirrored public repositories on Gitlab, that would be equivalent to the example you gave. But Github is taking content under specific licenses to build something new for commercial use. I'm not sure if what Github does falls under Fair Use, but I don't know that it matters. I can read fifty books and then write my own, which would…

GitHub isn’t building anything. The end user is. By this logic any and all neural nets that draw pictures are copyright infringing as well.

If they create exact copies of copyrighted pictures, then yes, they do.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#553

Post by thomasahle »

qayxc wrote: post #302
hellcow wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when it outputs large sections of unique code verbatim, as it's been shown to do.

If it's large sections, that can be fixed by either licence attribution or result filtering. That's at best a technical issue. What way too many people claim, however, is that the machine isn't even allowed to look at GPL'ed code for some reason, while humans are. I'd like to learn the reasoning behind that.

> What way too many people claim, however, is that the machine isn't even allowed to look at GPL'ed code for some reason, while humans are.

Why would those be the same thing? It's a matter of scale. Just like how people are allowed to read websites, but scraping is often disallowed.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#554

Post by 6gvONxR4sf7o »

I've figured out why ML based fair use arguments for generative models feel dirty to me.

Imagine a scenario where you'd love to have access to a large number of my digital widgets, but they're expensive to make or buy, and a large number of them is really expensive. So you train an ML model on my things you can't afford to buy. It's still expensive, but that's a one time cost. Spend $5M training GPT-3, it's fine. Now you can sample from the space of my digital widgets. You have gotten a large number of widgets, just by throwing money at AWS. With money, you have converted my widgets into your widgets, and I'll never see a cent of it.

That's the issue. Content is expensive and it's still needed. Traditionally, I make content and if you want to benefit from my labor, you pay me. In the future, if you want to benefit from my labor, you pay AWS instead.

tl;dr The most significant equation for generative models is "$$$ + my stuff = your stuff"

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#555

Post by jcelerier »

AaronFriel wrote: post #505
infogulch wrote: post #410

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did you choose the standard of "substantial" = "100s of lines"? Especially since we've already seen examples of verbatim output in the dozens of lines range, that choice of standard is rather conveniently just outside what exists so far. If we find a case with 200 lines of verbatim output will you say the only reasonable standard is 1000s of lines? I don't think your argument is as strong as you're making it out…

Just a fairly arbitrary number. It's easy to produce a few lines from memory, up to 10s of lines and that's "obviously" fair use. I would be surprised if many of haven't inadvertently "copied" some GPL code in this way! This goes to the "substantial" test for fair use. Clips from a film can contain core plot points, quotes from a book can contain vital passages to understanding a character, screen captures and scrape…

> Just a fairly arbitrary number. It's easy to produce a few lines from memory, up to 10s of lines and that's "obviously" fair use.

it's anything but obvious. https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/

> there is no formula to ensure that a predetermined percentage or amount of a work—or specific number of words, lines, pages, copies—may be used without permission.

9 lines of very run-of-the-mill code in Oracle / Google weren't considered fair use.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#556

Post by bruce343434 »

kune wrote: post #550

Guys please read the Terms of Use of Github section D.4. We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our dat…

Still depends on how they defined "the Service". Can't be bothered to read the full license myself because I don't use github - but I can't imagine "the Service" is defined as including an AI copy paster.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#557

Post by remram »

6gvONxR4sf7o wrote: post #554

I've figured out why ML based fair use arguments for generative models feel dirty to me. Imagine a scenario where you'd love to have access to a large number of my digital widgets, but they're expensive to make or buy, and a large number of them is really expensive. So you train an ML model on my things you can't afford to buy. It's still expensive, but that's a one time cost. Spend $5M training GPT-3, it's fine. Now…

In addition, the model is going to spit out widgets that are combinations of the existing ones, if it doesn't outright copy. This is different from a human who is going to put their own creativity into it (and will be accused of plagiarism if they don't): the model has no creativity to offer on top of the unlicensed input.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#559

Post by remram »

kune wrote: post #550

Guys please read the Terms of Use of Github section D.4. We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our dat…

If I upload somebody else's GPL code to GitHub, I also can't grant to GitHub the (implicit) legal rights to use that code in Copilot, because they are not mine to give.

I could previously mirror GPL code, because the GPL granted me the rights I need to grant GitHub as part of their ToS; but if they change their ToS, or if the meaning is changed by them adding vastly different features to their Service, this becomes a problem.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#560

Post by mumblemumble »

bruce343434 wrote: post #556
kune wrote: post #550

Guys please read the Terms of Use of Github section D.4. We need the legal right to do things like host Your Content, publish it, and share it. You grant us and our legal successors the right to store, archive, parse, and display Your Content, and make incidental copies, as necessary to provide the Service, including improving the Service over time. This license includes the right to do things like copy it to our dat…

Still depends on how they defined "the Service". Can't be bothered to read the full license myself because I don't use github - but I can't imagine "the Service" is defined as including an AI copy paster.

> The “Service” refers to the applications, software, products, and services provided by GitHub, including any Beta Previews.

So it wouldn't include just any AI copy pasters. Only the ones that are provided by GitHub.

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