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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

#561

Post by nonfamous »

svaha1728 wrote: post #474
nonfamous wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> However - Copilot directly recites code. You make that statement as an absolute, but in the interests of clarity, all evidence so far shows that it directly recites code very rarely indeed. Even the Quake example had to be prompted by the specific variable names used in the original code. In practice, the output code is heavily influenced by your own context — the comments you include, the variable names you use, e…

So if a foreign company pilfers the source code to Windows, can they add it to a training set and then 'prompt' the machine learning algorithm to spit out a new 'copyright free' Windows, just by transforming the variable names?

Well no, because only GitHub has access to the training set. But more importantly this misunderstands how Copilot even works -- even if Windows was in the training set, you couldn't get Copilot to reproduce it. It only generates a few lines of code at a time, and even then it's almost certainly entirely novel code.

Now, if you knew the code you wanted Copilot to generate you could certainly type it character by character and you might save yourself a few keystrokes with the TAB key, but it's going to be much MUCH easier to simply copy the whole codebase as files, and now you're right back where you started.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#562

Post by nonfamous »

b3morales wrote: post #433
nonfamous wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For your specific case, “take your hard work that you clearly marked with a GPL license and then make money from it”, you don’t even need to rely on fair use. As long as you comply with the terms of the GPL, making money with the code is perfectly acceptable, and the FSF even endorses the practice. [1] Red Hat is but one billion-dollar example. [1] https://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.en.html#DoesTheGPLAllow...

But the person making money from the GPL code has to follow the terms of the license. Attribution, sharing modifications, etc.

Correct. That's why I said "As long as you comply with the terms of the GPL".

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#563

Post by cameldrv »

My question is what GitHub is going to do when people start sending them DMCA takedown notices over their code being distributed through this system.

Currently, if you claim to be a copyright owner GitHub can respond to a DMCA takedown by removing the repository. This might require them to retrain the entire model.

One option for GitHub might be to maintain a blocklist of various code snippets, and if there is a substring match, just don't make the suggestion.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#564

Post by jspaetzel »

fleddr wrote: post #551

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…

If Google makes an amazing model that no-one can beat it will only be dominate as long as others get access to it freely. But if there are restrictions on access or if it's too expensive, other options will appear and even if they're not as perfect, they'll still be very usable. Imagine a coalition of companies all feeding data, that could compete just as well.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#565

Post by eCa »

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 Copilot requires separate payment or signup I[1] fail to see how it can be part of ”the Service” as defined therein, and since the rights to do ”things” to the provided code only go as far ”as necessary to provide the Service” the ToS can’t[2] be used to argue that it gives explicit permission to use provided code for this purpose. Or am I misinterpreting something?

[1] I’m not a lawyer.

[2] Still not a lawyer.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#566

Post by jspaetzel »

habitue wrote: post #353

I am really confused by HN's response to copilot. It seems like before the twitter thread on it went viral, the only people who cared about programmers copying (verbatim!) short snippets of code like this would be lawyers and executives. Suddenly everyone is coming out of the woodworks as copyright maximalists? I know HN loves a good "well actually" and Microsoft is always suspect, but let's leave the idea of code la…

Copy-left licenses are generally liked by developers, this flys very directly against that since it suggests circumvention of those type of licenses.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#567

Post by ncr100 »

fleddr wrote: post #551

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…

I think it's an innate quality of technology.

Yes sophisticated AI tech concentrates power for those who already have power.

And the technology we all (presumably readers of HN) create can enhance the impact of the user. And this can result in unfair circumstances, in reality.

Law and force can prevent disproportionate use of power. Of course one must define the law, which may be done AFTER the offense has been committed. Further, if those who make the laws are corrupted by those with e.g. this AI tech power, then no effective law may be enacted and the hypothetical abuse will continue.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#568

Post by fragmede »

superfrank wrote: post #511
leventov wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps people on HN start sensing that successors of Github Copilot will take their programming job. Rightly so. Personally, I think that in the age of AI programming any notions of code licensing should be abolished. There is no copyright for genes in nature or memes in culture; similarly, these shouldn't be copyright for code.

> Perhaps people on HN start sensing that successors of Github Copilot will take their programming job. Rightly so. I still think we're a long way from that. Copilot will help write code quicker, but it's not doing anything you couldn't do with a Google search and copy/paste. Once developers move beyond the jr. level, writing code tends to become the least of their worries. Writing the code is easy, understanding how…

Depends on your definition of "a long way". Some of the GPT3 based code generation demos (which, explicitly, are just that - demos - we aren't shown the limitations of the system during the demo) say that's closer than I think.

https://analyticsindiamag.com/open-ai-gpt-3-code-generator-a... has a bunch of videos of this in action.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#569

Post by jspaetzel »

prettygood wrote: post #217
ssivark wrote: post #64

Calling it “public” code feels like doublespeak. It’s most definitely NOT public domain code — it only happens to be hosted on GitHub and browsable ( but not copyable ) by people. “Source available for viewing” is very different from “public property” as the phrase is commonly understood: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_property

Not copyable by people, but we can go through the code, learn from it and then use that knowledge to improve our coding skills. Isn't that what autopilot is doing here? The system is merely learning how to code, and then applying it's learnings on other programming problems. It's not like it's writing software to specifically compete with other programs.

There's a really philosophical question here about whether Copilot is learning or imitating.

For instance, a parrot doesn't learn to speak, it learns to imitate speech.

Re: All public GitHub code was used in training Copilot

#570

Post by anonydsfsfs »

bionhoward wrote: post #461
neonihil wrote: post #457

I think it’s pretty easy to defeat MS in court. We just need to bring the music industry into this! For example: Let’s train a network on Beatles music to generate new Beatles songs. I’m pretty sure music lawyers will find a way to prove that the trained network is violating the label’s copyright, as they always manage to do that. And then we just need to use the precedent and argue that music is the same thing as co…

Potentially dumb question from a guy who isn't a lawyer: Does Copilot infringe Google's patent(s) on the Transformer architecture? If so, then Google could potentially sue them for royalties, at least. Further, couldn't this Copilot thing backfire for Github because customer trust is more valuable than AI training data right now? If folks don't feel they can trust Github, seems like they could move their work to othe…

Doesn't really matter, because if Google sued Microsoft, Microsoft would immediately hit back with a countersuit, since they would have little trouble finding something in their 90,000+ patent warchest that Google is infringing on. Software patents have become a matter of mutually-assured destruction for the big players. The only winning move is not to play.
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