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It does not generate secrets. The Twitter conversation does not mention that word. Most certainly, it regurgitates secrets it has seen on crawled repos. Can the

It does not generate secrets. The Twitter conversation does not mention that word. Most certainly, it regurgitates secrets it has seen on crawled repos. Can the title be adjusted, please?

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
chrisseaton 5y ago
I think ‘generates’ means produces this output in this context. It’s the correct term for the technology being talked about. Nobody is confused that it’s producing new cryptographic tokens.
- playpause 5y ago
  I was confused. "Copilot generates valid secrets" sounds like it can be used to generate new secrets that are valid in format or something. The headline is misleading, even if you personally weren't misled. The secrets are not being generated, they are real secrets appearing in generated code.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > The secrets are not being generated They are being generated. It's a Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It's generative. It generates things. That's what this technical term means. It's correct.
    - captaincaveman 5y ago
      Terms have different meaning in different context, I think both terms are valid in this case, thus a qualifying word to remove ambiguity is the normal solution.
    - alkonaut 5y ago
      I think a generative transformer can be said to generate text. It doesn't generate new words. The words it uses to generate the text, are words copied verbatim from the input. What's emergent is the combination of those words into text. The generated output has building blocks (characters, words) which themselves are not "generated" in the sense that they are novel. A random number generator generates numbers. It doesn't generate the digits used to represent the random numbers. Those are taken from a set (such as 0..9) and just "used".
    - playpause 5y ago
      The issue is whether the headline can be easily misunderstood, not whether it is technically correct. Why not make it unambiguous? “GitHub Copilot output includes secrets” or something.
- wccrawford 5y ago
  Actually, reading the title, I wondered how it could possibly do just that. But it's not generating the secrets, it's generating code that contain those secrets.
numpad0 5y ago
Agreed. This is just another examples of apparent reality that Copilot is obfuscated database than magical generalization of programming concepts
s_gourichon 5y ago
So, Co-pilot generates text including secrets it has seen. For a comparison point, afl fuzzer actually generates never-seen, valid JPEG files "out of thin air", see http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin-air.html http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thi... and matching conversation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8571879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8571879 It would be interesting to combine both approaches and (interrupted by the sudden singularity ;-).
dang 5y ago
Sure. It's a good excuse to get the word regurgitate in an HN title.

It does not generate secrets. The Twitter conversation does not mention that word. Most certainly, it regurgitates secrets it has seen on crawled repos. Can the title be adjusted, please?

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

chrisseaton 5y ago

I think ‘generates’ means produces this output in this context. It’s the correct term for the technology being talked about. Nobody is confused that it’s producing new cryptographic tokens.

playpause 5y ago
I was confused. "Copilot generates valid secrets" sounds like it can be used to generate new secrets that are valid in format or something. The headline is misleading, even if you personally weren't misled. The secrets are not being generated, they are real secrets appearing in generated code.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > The secrets are not being generated They are being generated. It's a Generative Pre-trained Transformer. It's generative. It generates things. That's what this technical term means. It's correct.
  - captaincaveman 5y ago
    Terms have different meaning in different context, I think both terms are valid in this case, thus a qualifying word to remove ambiguity is the normal solution.
  - alkonaut 5y ago
    I think a generative transformer can be said to generate text. It doesn't generate new words. The words it uses to generate the text, are words copied verbatim from the input. What's emergent is the combination of those words into text. The generated output has building blocks (characters, words) which themselves are not "generated" in the sense that they are novel. A random number generator generates numbers. It doesn't generate the digits used to represent the random numbers. Those are taken from a set (such as 0..9) and just "used".
  - playpause 5y ago
    The issue is whether the headline can be easily misunderstood, not whether it is technically correct. Why not make it unambiguous? “GitHub Copilot output includes secrets” or something.
wccrawford 5y ago
Actually, reading the title, I wondered how it could possibly do just that. But it's not generating the secrets, it's generating code that contain those secrets.

numpad0 5y ago

Agreed. This is just another examples of apparent reality that Copilot is obfuscated database than magical generalization of programming concepts

s_gourichon 5y ago

So, Co-pilot generates text including secrets it has seen. For a comparison point, afl fuzzer actually generates never-seen, valid JPEG files "out of thin air", see http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thin-air.html http://lcamtuf.blogspot.com/2014/11/pulling-jpegs-out-of-thi... and matching conversation https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8571879 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8571879 It would be interesting to combine both approaches and (interrupted by the sudden singularity ;-).

dang 5y ago

Sure. It's a good excuse to get the word regurgitate in an HN title.