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> Is it producing code (by which I mean creating/inventing new code by itself), or is it just combining existing code? How do you differentiate between these t

> Is it producing code (by which I mean creating/inventing new code by itself), or is it just combining existing code? How do you differentiate between these two things? If I take `for i in range(10):` from one place and `print(x * 2) from another place, and combine them to get for i in range(10): print(i ** 2) have I "produced" something or "combined" existing things? As an aside, your understanding of how the model works here is completely wrong. Like, just absolutely fundamentally completely wrong.

bogwog 5y ago
> How do you differentiate between these two things? That's a contrived example because none of those lines could be protected by copyright, patents, etc. A better example might be if you started selling a 30 minute movie that was just the first 15 minutes of Toy Story spliced together with the last 15 minutes of Shrek. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that would qualify as a derivative work, meaning you're potentially infringing on someone's rights (unless they've given you permission/a license). And to be clear, none of these problems are new. People have been fighting over copyright and it's philosophy in court for a very long time. The only thing that's different here is that it seems some people think it's ok to ignore copyright if you use Copilot as a proxy for the infringement. > As an aside, your understanding of how the model works here is completely wrong. Like, just absolutely fundamentally completely wrong. Of course I don't, it's a neural network. You don't know either. That example I posted could be exactly what it's doing, or not even close. (although for the record, I wasn't trying to explain how copilot works in that comment. It was a hypothetical "AI" for the sake of discussion, not that it matters. My point about it being copyright infringement is the same even if that hypothetical implementation is wrong)
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > That's a contrived example because none of those lines could be protected by copyright, patents, etc. Well no. The question I'm asking about, the philosophical distinction between "producing" or "combining" is a valid question no matter the copyrightability of anything. It's an interesting philosophical question even if we presume that copyright is bubkis. > It was a hypothetical "AI" for the sake of discussion, not that it matters. Ah, my mistake. I see that now. > Of course I don't, it's a neural network. You don't know either. I may not know how to make a lightbulb, but I do know hundreds of ways not to make one ;)
- nl 5y ago
  > Of course I don't, it's a neural network. You don't know either. That example I posted could be exactly what it's doing, or not even close. What is this supposed to mean? We know how neural networks generate things like this very very well. I personally have built a system that takes pictures of hand drawn mobile app layouts into the NN, then generates a JSON based description file that I compile into a Reactive Native and/or HTML5 layout file. This was trivially easy in 2018 when I did it. It took me maybe 2 weeks engineering time, and I'm no genius. Our understanding of how transformer-based NNs work has come a long way since then, but even back then it was easy to show how conditioning on different parts of the image would generate different code.

bogwog 5y ago

> How do you differentiate between these two things? That's a contrived example because none of those lines could be protected by copyright, patents, etc. A better example might be if you started selling a 30 minute movie that was just the first 15 minutes of Toy Story spliced together with the last 15 minutes of Shrek. I'm not a lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that would qualify as a derivative work, meaning you're potentially infringing on someone's rights (unless they've given you permission/a license). And to be clear, none of these problems are new. People have been fighting over copyright and it's philosophy in court for a very long time. The only thing that's different here is that it seems some people think it's ok to ignore copyright if you use Copilot as a proxy for the infringement. > As an aside, your understanding of how the model works here is completely wrong. Like, just absolutely fundamentally completely wrong. Of course I don't, it's a neural network. You don't know either. That example I posted could be exactly what it's doing, or not even close. (although for the record, I wasn't trying to explain how copilot works in that comment. It was a hypothetical "AI" for the sake of discussion, not that it matters. My point about it being copyright infringement is the same even if that hypothetical implementation is wrong)

joshuamorton 5y ago
> That's a contrived example because none of those lines could be protected by copyright, patents, etc. Well no. The question I'm asking about, the philosophical distinction between "producing" or "combining" is a valid question no matter the copyrightability of anything. It's an interesting philosophical question even if we presume that copyright is bubkis. > It was a hypothetical "AI" for the sake of discussion, not that it matters. Ah, my mistake. I see that now. > Of course I don't, it's a neural network. You don't know either. I may not know how to make a lightbulb, but I do know hundreds of ways not to make one ;)
nl 5y ago
> Of course I don't, it's a neural network. You don't know either. That example I posted could be exactly what it's doing, or not even close. What is this supposed to mean? We know how neural networks generate things like this very very well. I personally have built a system that takes pictures of hand drawn mobile app layouts into the NN, then generates a JSON based description file that I compile into a Reactive Native and/or HTML5 layout file. This was trivially easy in 2018 when I did it. It took me maybe 2 weeks engineering time, and I'm no genius. Our understanding of how transformer-based NNs work has come a long way since then, but even back then it was easy to show how conditioning on different parts of the image would generate different code.