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The article is worth reading, but a good summary is at the bottom: > This investigation demonstrates that GitHub Copilot can quote a body of code verbatim, but

The article is worth reading, but a good summary is at the bottom: > This investigation demonstrates that GitHub Copilot can quote a body of code verbatim, but that it rarely does so, and when it does, it mostly quotes code that everybody quotes, and mostly at the beginning of a file, as if to break the ice. But there’s still one big difference between GitHub Copilot reciting code and me reciting a poem: I know when I’m quoting. I would also like to know when Copilot is echoing existing code rather than coming up with its own ideas. That way, I’m able to look up background information about that code, and to include credit where credit is due. The answer is obvious: sharing the prefiltering solution we used in this analysis to detect overlap with the training set. When a suggestion contains snippets copied from the training set, the UI should simply tell you where it’s quoted from. You can then either include proper attribution or decide against using that code altogether. This duplication search is not yet integrated into the technical preview, but we plan to do so. And we will both continue to work on decreasing rates of recitation, and on making its detection more precise.

sillysaurusx 5y ago
The answer wasn’t obvious to me. Nice solution. It sounds like you’re a part of the Copilot team. If so, then I’m happy to see the Copilot team cares about these issues at all. I was expecting nothing but stonewall until the conversation died out, since realistically the chance of the EFF bringing or winning a lawsuit seems small. (And who else would try?) But when you anger the world and being so much attention to this delicate issue of copyright in AI, you risk every hobbyist. Suppose the world decides that AI models need to be restricted. Now every person who wants to get into AI will need to deal with it. I’m not sure anyone else cares, but I care, because it’s the difference between someone getting into woodworking (an unrestricted hobby) vs becoming a lawyer or doctor (the maximally restrictive hobby). The closer we are to the latter, the fewer ML practitioners we’ll see in the long run. And even though the world will go along fine — it always does — it’d be a sad outcome, since the only way it could happen is if gigantic corporations were flagrantly flying in the face of copyright spirit, daring it to punish you. My point is, please care about the right things. No one cared about language filters on ML models outside of a select vocal group, yet look how deeply OpenAI took those concerns to heart. Everybody cares whether their personal or professional work is being ripped off by an overfitted AI model, and it wasn’t obvious that GitHub or OpenAI gave it more than a passing thought. Backlinking to the training set should help. But it’s also going to catapult the concern of “holy moly, this code is GPL licensed!” to the front and center of anyone who works in corporate settings. Gamedev is particularly insular when it comes to GPL, and I can just imagine the conversations at various studios. “This thing might spit out GPL? We can’t use this.” My point is, when you launch that new feature to address people’s concerns, please ensure it’s working. You won’t be able to do exact string matches against the training set; you can’t rely on “well, it’s slightly different, so it’s not really the same thing.” If it’s substantially similar, it needs to be cited. And that seems like a much tougher problem than merely building an index of matching code fragments. If you launch it, and it doesn’t work, it’s going to stoke the flames. Careful not to roast.
- onionisafruit 5y ago
  FYI, the post you replied to is entirely a quote from the article (even though formatting makes it appear that only the second paragraph is a quote). So the poster likely is not working on copilot.
  - sillysaurusx 5y ago
    Haha. Thank you. Well, I just hope Copilot starts caring about people’s concerns. It’s kind of strange that no one from Copilot has said anything on HN. I wonder who has the authority to discuss it, if anyone. Usually bad PR is accompanied by “So-and-so from X here! We hear you…” They’re probably going to have a much harder time launching this feature than they imply in the article. It’s hard even for database companies that specialize in full text search.
    - onionisafruit 5y ago
      I think the this article is an indication that github is taking this seriously
      - Sanguinaire 5y ago
        It's an indication that they want the appearance of taking it seriously. I think this episode will tell us definitely how much of GitHub is left, and how much Microsoft has infected their culture.
    - addandsubtract 5y ago
      The original thread about Copilot contained a post from the dev at github. He only answered a couple of softball questions, though.
  - devinplatt 5y ago
    Yep! I don't work there. I can't fix it since I can't edit my comment anymore. Next time I'll be more clear with any multi paragraph quotes!
  - 5y ago
zanethomas 5y ago
"I know when I’m quoting." or so you say <g>
bjourne 5y ago
Suppose you are a teacher for a group of programming students. You ask them to implement a binary tree in C. The first student comes up with a verbatim copy of the code on Rosetta Code, the second with the same code with some variable names changed, and he third with indentation changed from tabs to spaces. Which of them were cheating?
- ibeale1 5y ago
  I think this hypothetical might miss the point of the comment it's replying to. In my mind, cheating requires intention. Now, it would be hard for the student to disprove that any of these situations were not intentional but if for example the student studied Rosetta for the exam, it's very possible the student just memorized the code and didn't reference it during the test. Is that still cheating?
  - bjourne 5y ago
    Cheating does not require intent. That is, the university only has to prove that the student's work is not original to conclude that plagiarism and also cheating has occurred. Memorization is usually not prohibited in exams.

sillysaurusx 5y ago

The answer wasn’t obvious to me. Nice solution. It sounds like you’re a part of the Copilot team. If so, then I’m happy to see the Copilot team cares about these issues at all. I was expecting nothing but stonewall until the conversation died out, since realistically the chance of the EFF bringing or winning a lawsuit seems small. (And who else would try?) But when you anger the world and being so much attention to this delicate issue of copyright in AI, you risk every hobbyist. Suppose the world decides that AI models need to be restricted. Now every person who wants to get into AI will need to deal with it. I’m not sure anyone else cares, but I care, because it’s the difference between someone getting into woodworking (an unrestricted hobby) vs becoming a lawyer or doctor (the maximally restrictive hobby). The closer we are to the latter, the fewer ML practitioners we’ll see in the long run. And even though the world will go along fine — it always does — it’d be a sad outcome, since the only way it could happen is if gigantic corporations were flagrantly flying in the face of copyright spirit, daring it to punish you. My point is, please care about the right things. No one cared about language filters on ML models outside of a select vocal group, yet look how deeply OpenAI took those concerns to heart. Everybody cares whether their personal or professional work is being ripped off by an overfitted AI model, and it wasn’t obvious that GitHub or OpenAI gave it more than a passing thought. Backlinking to the training set should help. But it’s also going to catapult the concern of “holy moly, this code is GPL licensed!” to the front and center of anyone who works in corporate settings. Gamedev is particularly insular when it comes to GPL, and I can just imagine the conversations at various studios. “This thing might spit out GPL? We can’t use this.” My point is, when you launch that new feature to address people’s concerns, please ensure it’s working. You won’t be able to do exact string matches against the training set; you can’t rely on “well, it’s slightly different, so it’s not really the same thing.” If it’s substantially similar, it needs to be cited. And that seems like a much tougher problem than merely building an index of matching code fragments. If you launch it, and it doesn’t work, it’s going to stoke the flames. Careful not to roast.

onionisafruit 5y ago
FYI, the post you replied to is entirely a quote from the article (even though formatting makes it appear that only the second paragraph is a quote). So the poster likely is not working on copilot.
- sillysaurusx 5y ago
  Haha. Thank you. Well, I just hope Copilot starts caring about people’s concerns. It’s kind of strange that no one from Copilot has said anything on HN. I wonder who has the authority to discuss it, if anyone. Usually bad PR is accompanied by “So-and-so from X here! We hear you…” They’re probably going to have a much harder time launching this feature than they imply in the article. It’s hard even for database companies that specialize in full text search.
  - onionisafruit 5y ago
    I think the this article is an indication that github is taking this seriously
    - Sanguinaire 5y ago
      It's an indication that they want the appearance of taking it seriously. I think this episode will tell us definitely how much of GitHub is left, and how much Microsoft has infected their culture.
  - addandsubtract 5y ago
    The original thread about Copilot contained a post from the dev at github. He only answered a couple of softball questions, though.
- devinplatt 5y ago
  Yep! I don't work there. I can't fix it since I can't edit my comment anymore. Next time I'll be more clear with any multi paragraph quotes!
- 5y ago

zanethomas 5y ago

"I know when I’m quoting." or so you say <g>

bjourne 5y ago

Suppose you are a teacher for a group of programming students. You ask them to implement a binary tree in C. The first student comes up with a verbatim copy of the code on Rosetta Code, the second with the same code with some variable names changed, and he third with indentation changed from tabs to spaces. Which of them were cheating?

ibeale1 5y ago
I think this hypothetical might miss the point of the comment it's replying to. In my mind, cheating requires intention. Now, it would be hard for the student to disprove that any of these situations were not intentional but if for example the student studied Rosetta for the exam, it's very possible the student just memorized the code and didn't reference it during the test. Is that still cheating?
- bjourne 5y ago
  Cheating does not require intent. That is, the university only has to prove that the student's work is not original to conclude that plagiarism and also cheating has occurred. Memorization is usually not prohibited in exams.