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The second tweet in the thread seems badly off the mark in its understanding of copyright law. > copyright does not only cover copying and pasting; it covers d

The second tweet in the thread seems badly off the mark in its understanding of copyright law. > copyright does not only cover copying and pasting; it covers derivative works. github copilot was trained on open source code and the sum total of everything it knows was drawn from that code. there is no possible interpretation of "derivative" that does not include this Copyright law is very complicated (remember Google vs Oracle?) and involves a lot of balancing different factors [0]. Simply saying that something is a "derivative work" doesn't establish that it's copyright infringement. An important defense against infringement claims is arguing that the work is "transformative." Obviously "transformative" is a subjective term, but one example is the Supreme Court determining that Google copying Java's API's to a different platform is transformative [1]. There are a lot of other really interesting examples out there [2] involving things like if parodies are fair use (yes) or if satires are fair use (not necessarily). But one way or another, it's hard for me to believe that taking static code and using it to build a code-generating AI wouldn't meet that standard. As I said, though, copyright law is really complicated, and I'm certainly not a lawyer. I'm sure someone out there could make an argument that Copilot is copyright infringement, but this thread isn't that argument. [0] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-the-four-factors.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-the-four-fa... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_Inc.#Decision https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_LLC_v._Oracle_America,_... [2] https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-what-transformative.html https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/fair-use-what-transf... Edit: Note that the other comments saying "I'm just going to wrap an entire operating system in 'AI' to do an end run around copyright" are proposing to do something that wouldn't be transformative and therefore probably wouldn't be fair use. Copyright law has a lot of shades of grey and balancing of factors that make it a lot less "hackable" than those of us who live in the world of code might imagine.

imranhou 5y ago
Google copied an interface(declarative), not code snippets/functions(implementation). Copilot is capable of copying only Implementation. IMO that is quite different and easily a violation if it was copied verbatim.
invig 5y ago
If you can read open source code, learn from it, and write your own code, why can't a computer?
- toss1 5y ago
  As the original commenter said, you have the capability for abstract learning, thought, zand generalized learning, which the "AI" lacks. It is not uncommon to ask person to "explain in your own words..." - as in use your own abstract internal representation of the learned concepts to demonstrate that you have developed such an abstract internal concept of the topic, and are not merely regurgitating re-disorganized input snippets. If you don't understand the difference... edit: That said, if you can create a computer capable of such different abstract thought, congratulations, you've solved the problem of Artificial General Intelligence, and will be welcomed to the Trillionaires' Club
  - gradys 5y ago
    The AI most certainly does not lack the ability to generalize. Not as well as humans, but generalization is the key interesting result in deep learning, leading to papers like this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05468 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05468 The ability to generalize actually seems to keep increasing with the number of parameters, which is the key interesting result in the GPT-* line of work that Copilot is based on.
    - toss1 5y ago
      I've seen some very clever output from GPT-*, but zero indicating any kind of abstract generalized understanding of any topic in use. Being able to predict the most likely succeeding string for a given input can be extremely useful. I've even used it with some success as a more sophisticated kind of search engine for some materials science questions. But I'm under no illusions that it has the first shadow of a hint of minor understanding of the topics of materials science, nevermind any general understanding. It seems we're discussing different meanings of the word "generalize".
- 015a 5y ago

imranhou 5y ago

Google copied an interface(declarative), not code snippets/functions(implementation). Copilot is capable of copying only Implementation. IMO that is quite different and easily a violation if it was copied verbatim.

invig 5y ago

If you can read open source code, learn from it, and write your own code, why can't a computer?

toss1 5y ago
As the original commenter said, you have the capability for abstract learning, thought, zand generalized learning, which the "AI" lacks. It is not uncommon to ask person to "explain in your own words..." - as in use your own abstract internal representation of the learned concepts to demonstrate that you have developed such an abstract internal concept of the topic, and are not merely regurgitating re-disorganized input snippets. If you don't understand the difference... edit: That said, if you can create a computer capable of such different abstract thought, congratulations, you've solved the problem of Artificial General Intelligence, and will be welcomed to the Trillionaires' Club
- gradys 5y ago
  The AI most certainly does not lack the ability to generalize. Not as well as humans, but generalization is the key interesting result in deep learning, leading to papers like this one: https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05468 https://arxiv.org/abs/1710.05468 The ability to generalize actually seems to keep increasing with the number of parameters, which is the key interesting result in the GPT-* line of work that Copilot is based on.
  - toss1 5y ago
    I've seen some very clever output from GPT-*, but zero indicating any kind of abstract generalized understanding of any topic in use. Being able to predict the most likely succeeding string for a given input can be extremely useful. I've even used it with some success as a more sophisticated kind of search engine for some materials science questions. But I'm under no illusions that it has the first shadow of a hint of minor understanding of the topics of materials science, nevermind any general understanding. It seems we're discussing different meanings of the word "generalize".
015a 5y ago