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Part of my code makes Copilot crash

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Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#81

Post by ronsor »

eric4smith wrote: post #64

Besides the absurdity of the code crashing because of the word "gender". My problem and curiosity with all of this is... "What was going on in the head of the person writing the parser?" I mean, were they thinking that if someone is writing code, let's say, for a gender dropdown and it was only ["male", "female"], it would try to suggest to us to add 26 more genders instead (and worse, suggest a list of genders to ad…

Regardless of what Copilot suggested for "gender", it would've offended someone, and I think that's what Microsoft wants to avoid. Not even woke so much as it is trying to avoid potential controversies.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#82

Post by throwaway290 »

moyix wrote: post #71

Yep, I noticed this last year when they still stored the list client-side and had great fun reverse engineering it: https://twitter.com/moyix/status/1433254293352730628

Interesting, so it might not be the specific token "gender" but rather blocked words ("man" or "woman") that appear in suggestions will suppress Copilot. And presumably another token that like "communist" might do the same...

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#83

Post by CoastalCoder »

evrydayhustling wrote: post #15
staticassertion wrote: post #3

Content filters on ML feel so silly. I assume the goal is to avoid bad press? Because the... "attack" would be someone generating offensive material, which they could just write themselves, not to mention I have serious doubts that any filter is going to be a serious barrier. For images/ video I can see merit, ex: using that nudity inference project on images of children, but text seems particularly pointless.

Imagine that you had a co-worker who seemed totally normal 90% of the time... But about once a week, someone would bring up a topic that made them go full nazi or attempt to seduce their coworker. That's where we are with LLM-based generative text. It's not (just) about PR, it's about putting guardrails around the many many many circumstances the tech can do harm or just seem ignorant.

> Imagine that you had a co-worker who seemed totally normal 90% of the time... But about once a week, someone would bring up a topic that made them go full nazi or attempt to seduce their coworker.

This is my mental image of how company happy-hour-Fridays play out. It's one of the reasons I don't drink.

[And if you're curious, in fact I'm not fun at parties ;) ]

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#85

Post by czbond »

stolen_biscuit wrote: post #57
_zllx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I added "gender" (an IANA registered JWT claim) to my JWT payload schema and found Copilot will not provide any suggestions after that. Not on the same line, nor in the rest of the file. After removing the word gender entirely, it works again. https://www.iana.org/assignments/jwt/jwt.xhtml

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They're giving you a method of repeatable steps for you, yourself, to perform to see if the issue is encountered. That is more than passing a smell test.... that passes for at the minimum of a valid bug report.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#86

Post by axedwool »

kodah wrote: post #67
mhhhhhhh wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

I see this kind of questioning pop up when someone states that something bothers them and someone else deeply disagrees. Is there a name for this kind of questioning of someones foundational feelings about something, as if to allude in every question that it's purely wrong to feel that way?

Gaslighting.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#87

Post by LAC-Tech »

Aren't we missing the forest for the trees here?

We're zeroing in on how silly is it for copilot to trigger its content filter on the word "gender".

To me the real issue is that copilot has a content filter in the first place. It's unwelcome and unnecessary.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#88

Post by mcphage »

Thorentis wrote: post #66

What is Github worried about? That Copilot might suggest some code that checks for a "gender" variable being only one of two values? Utterly absurd that we've now reached this point. I already had plenty of reasons to boycott Copilot, now I have another one.

> What is Github worried about? That Copilot might suggest some code that checks for a "gender" variable being only one of two values?

Perhaps Github is worried about a backlash if it suggests code that allows for more than 2 values.

Re: Part of my code makes Copilot crash

#89

Post by rayiner »

MarkSweep wrote: post #31
drewcoo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

There is a whole Wikipedia article for it!: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postgenderism

I wish “the discourse” would learn to acknowledge the difference between post-genderist ideas, and basic rights for transgender people. The latter is (1) already the law of the land, and (2) not politically controversial: https://www.kff.org/other/press-release/poll-large-majoritie... (“Large majorities of Americans think it should be illegal for either employers or health care providers to discriminate against people because they are lesbian, gay or bisexual, or transgender, a new KFF poll finds. This includes large majorities of Republicans, independents and Democrats.”) See also: https://www.hrc.org/press-releases/icymi-bidens-bostock-eo-r... (83% of the public, including 63% of Republicans support Biden’s executive order protecting trans rights).

At this stage, attempting to use trans rights as a vehicle for broader changes to society’s notions of gender harms rather than helps trans people. It takes something that has broad support and is increasingly uncontroversial, and lashes it to a broader intellectual project that’s alienating and unpopular.

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