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GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

githubcopilotinvestigation.com

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Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#71

Post by [deleted] »

cercatrova wrote: post #32
blatherard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current github terms of service don't seem to mention this use when they describe the license granted github. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... 4. License Grant to Us 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 n…

> show it to you and other users...analyze it on our servers...share it with other users...perform it I don't know, sounds pretty similar to training on ML programs, even if they don't explicitly say "machine learning" in the ToS.

[deleted]

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#72

Post by dwgebler »

For me, as a (granted very minor) contributor to some open source, I couldn't care less about attribution. The ethos of open source is specifically about sharing stuff (probably for free) for the benefit of everyone, take a penny, leave a penny. It's more of an interesting question if Copilot is suggesting code verbatim from source-available rather than open source repos though.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#73

Post by kajaktum »

bigiain wrote: post #41

This is a bit off-topic, but I wonder if there are people/teams right now creating git repos, doing the source code equivalent of "SEO" on it, and embedding backdoors in stupidly overoptimized for the training process code? I wonder when we'll hear about the first big hack that gets traced back to production code pushed live after CoPilot "suggested" eval(base64decode({webshell}))

What is easier is to probably sneak in a new dependency that points to a malicious fork. Something like an XML to JSON library that does do the thing that is advertised but also additional things.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#74

Post by cmeacham98 »

cercatrova wrote: post #32
blatherard wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The current github terms of service don't seem to mention this use when they describe the license granted github. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/github-terms/github-t... 4. License Grant to Us 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 n…

> show it to you and other users...analyze it on our servers...share it with other users...perform it I don't know, sounds pretty similar to training on ML programs, even if they don't explicitly say "machine learning" in the ToS.

> This license does not grant GitHub the right to sell Your Content.

This would, at a minimum, preclude charging for Copilot.

This is missing the point though. Microsoft claims their use of source code for Copilot is fair use. If they are correct about that, licenses don't matter, this EULA doesn't matter, etc. Everyone should be focusing on this claim, arguing about any other detail before that is decided is a waste of time.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#75

Post by jfghi »

nomel wrote: post #47
RunSet wrote: post #13

> Microsoft char­ac­ter­izes the out­put of Copi­lot as a series of code "sug­ges­tions". Microsoft "does not claim any rights" in these sug­ges­tions. But nei­ther does Microsoft make any guar­an­tees about the cor­rect­ness, secu­rity, or exten­u­at­ing intel­lec­tual-prop­erty entan­gle­ments of the code so pro­duced. Once you accept a Copi­lot sug­ges­tion, all that becomes your prob­lem: > "You are respon­si­ble…

Could you help me understand the link between the two?

Linux is open source and Ballmer is displaying Microsoft’s negative attitude towards open source that is demonstrated in the author’s arguments regarding copilot.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#76

Post by typon »

This Copilot saga is another good reminder of why nothing is free. Developers have been using Github for free for years - now the chickens have come home to roost. The copyright licenses are just a formality - a form of kayfabe. If you aren't hosting your own code (GNU style), you should assume Microsoft owns it, for all intents and purposes.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#77

Post by civilized »

Kiro wrote: post #36
boomskats wrote: post #17

Everything else aside, the design on this site is among the best I've ever seen. Amazing typography, great to read on a phone.

I think it's very hard to skim for some reason.

With this site you see about 50-100 words on a large mobile screen. On HN you see 2-4x that.

Also, the section breaks and headers and boxes lack obvious rhyme or reason. It scans a tiny bit like a classy version of Time Cube. You keep getting hit with different font sizes and font styles and lines and ribbons and colors and you're not quite sure why.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#78

Post by smt88 »

19h wrote: post #52

I'd be rather saddened if Copilot was shut down or neutered because of a few vocal few protesting against it. It's been a massive productivity improvement to our senior devs, and I got so used to it that it's an annoyance when Copilot doesn't respond.

Copilot wouldn't be shut down or neutered because "a few vocal people" protested against it.

It would be because it's illegal and violates the licenses, desires, and intentions of the thousands of workers who wrote the code in its corpus.

You act like Microsoft is trying to do a public service and people are angry about it. The reality is that they're taking billions of hours of work and using it to build a product that only they control.

If they re-released Copilot as FOSS, a lot of the valid criticisms would evaporate.

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#79

Post by keithnz »

armchairhacker wrote: post #37

One issue I see with Copilot is that they get free access to all open-source data on GitHub, but using GitHub APIs to download the data yourself isn't possible (rate limiting). This is an unfair advantage. Copilot is not only making money off of open-source, they are making money off of open-source in a way others can't. I would love to see a lawsuit which requires GitHub to provide their full Copilot dataset.

why use the API? why not just use git to get the code? All you need the API for is repository discovery

Re: GitHub Copi­lot inves­ti­ga­tion

#80

Post by layer8 »

mdswanson wrote: post #58

I've been trained on open source code, and there are likely many algorithms that I've internalized that are very similar to the "standard" way of performing an operation. Is there a reason why an AI being trained on the same open source code isn't a similar situation? I agree that wholesale pasting of code chunks is an issue, but that hasn't been my experience with Copilot. I'm not arguing for Copilot here...I'm genu…

Humans can reasonably distinguish between when they are plagiarizing and when they are just applying their experience and knowledge. Copilot presumably isn’t able to make that distinction, and, arguably, so aren’t the consumers of Copilot’s output.
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