4 ms·

isn't the issue that github's particular implementation of the idea is braindead - as in it copy-pastes directly verbatim.

andybak 5y ago
Slight exaggeration but even given that aspect, I'm uncomfortable with the community's reaction
- onli 5y ago
  I am too. It's so weird to see free software proponents argue for what is in effect a big extension of what should be protected under copyright. Not only using it, not only distributing it, but even learning from it - and the line there between learning from it as an AI and learning as a human is fluid. This copyright maximization could have a similar effect as software patents - making it more difficult to write software, because there will be an increased danger of being sued for infringement ("you learnt how to do that if from my GPL code, but you used MIT!"). 1:1 copies are a different question (a "it depends" on how much gets copied and whether the code is protected, as in not obvious, in the first place), but those are not the main thing that gets focused on in that strange twittersphere (which the article is referencing).
  - louthy 5y ago
    > It's so weird to see free software proponents argue for what is in effect a big extension of what should be protected under copyright. I don't believe that's what they're arguing. They're arguing that they're putting themselves (or their employer's) products at risk by having unattributed copyright protected code in their products. It doesn't matter how much any of us would hope that copyright didn't exist, the fact is, it does. There are other issues with Copilot, but by far the biggest is the licensing risks for those using it in a professional software engineering environment. I'm a FOSS advocate and all my FOSS projects are MIT licensed. Anyone can use my code to do anything they like, but my day-to-day professional software engineering life needs to know where the code comes from and what its license is.
    - onli 5y ago
      Did you see https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635 https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635, discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769440 ? > it's official, obeying copyright is only for the plebs and proles, rich people and big companies can do whatever they want > Wow. It's amazing that nobody has brought up the point that the result of ML is a derivative work from the input dataset. If the dataset has a restrictive license, like the GPL, it is a clear cut case of violating the terms of the GPL because it is not being released in the open There are other reactions of course, I'm handpicking here, as those are the reactions I was referencing above. > my day-to-day professional software engineering life needs to know where the code comes from and what its license is. I understand, I agree with it. But that doesn't mean that code produced by an AI that did learn from GPL code has to be licensed under GPL. Verbatim copies of sufficient high originality, so that copyright applies: Sure. And that's where there is some risk of Copilot going wrong. But that's not the primary output of Copilot nor its goal.
      - louthy 5y ago
        > And that's where there is some risk of Copilot going wrong. But that's not the primary output of Copilot nor its goal. It took no more than 24 hours for the verbatim code to appear in the wild. It's irrelevant if it's the primary goal or not, if it can happen once then it can happen again; therefore (I believe) it's an existential risk to any organisation that uses it for their own products.
  - stefan_ 5y ago
    This is a clown take that was planted in you by the GitHub comments on this issue. Nobody cares particularly if you feed data into an algorithm of your choice. I can feed data into a hash algorithm all day and that won't come back to bite me. This particular algorithm isn't learning anything, it's a big pattern matching/information retrieval system. It wasn't fed tokens, AST, constructs, type information, it was fed pure source code hoping the oblique magic in between would make it develop understanding. Nothing of the sort happened and it is instead regurgitating input data verbatim, which is the obvious copyright issue at hand.
    - onli 5y ago
      You are making it sound as if the system only copies full functions verbatim, but that's not the case. See https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitation#results https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio... (as linked in a different comment thread here). And btw, clowns take? That's no way to enter into a productive discussion. > Nobody cares particularly if you feed data into an algorithm of your choice. I can feed data into a hash algorithm all day and that won't come back to bite me. I showed examples to the contrary in my other comment.
      - louthy 5y ago
        > You are making it sound as if the system only copies full functions verbatim It doesn't only do that, but it does do that [1]. And that is the issue. It doesn't matter if it only does this 1% of the time, it's enough to be high risk. [1] https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309
cmpb 5y ago
Has that been proven? It's possible it's only doing that due to a small training set
k__ 5y ago
I used it and I had the impression that it understood my code, sometimes at least. It once wrote an API client for a rather idiosyncratic interface I just implemented.
drath 5y ago
More like braindead because it was trained on an unfiltered set of data without checking licenses. In effect, they've created a code pirating tool.

andybak 5y ago

Slight exaggeration but even given that aspect, I'm uncomfortable with the community's reaction

onli 5y ago
I am too. It's so weird to see free software proponents argue for what is in effect a big extension of what should be protected under copyright. Not only using it, not only distributing it, but even learning from it - and the line there between learning from it as an AI and learning as a human is fluid. This copyright maximization could have a similar effect as software patents - making it more difficult to write software, because there will be an increased danger of being sued for infringement ("you learnt how to do that if from my GPL code, but you used MIT!"). 1:1 copies are a different question (a "it depends" on how much gets copied and whether the code is protected, as in not obvious, in the first place), but those are not the main thing that gets focused on in that strange twittersphere (which the article is referencing).
- louthy 5y ago
  > It's so weird to see free software proponents argue for what is in effect a big extension of what should be protected under copyright. I don't believe that's what they're arguing. They're arguing that they're putting themselves (or their employer's) products at risk by having unattributed copyright protected code in their products. It doesn't matter how much any of us would hope that copyright didn't exist, the fact is, it does. There are other issues with Copilot, but by far the biggest is the licensing risks for those using it in a professional software engineering environment. I'm a FOSS advocate and all my FOSS projects are MIT licensed. Anyone can use my code to do anything they like, but my day-to-day professional software engineering life needs to know where the code comes from and what its license is.
  - onli 5y ago
    Did you see https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635 https://twitter.com/NoraDotCodes/status/1412741339771461635, discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769440 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27769440 ? > it's official, obeying copyright is only for the plebs and proles, rich people and big companies can do whatever they want > Wow. It's amazing that nobody has brought up the point that the result of ML is a derivative work from the input dataset. If the dataset has a restrictive license, like the GPL, it is a clear cut case of violating the terms of the GPL because it is not being released in the open There are other reactions of course, I'm handpicking here, as those are the reactions I was referencing above. > my day-to-day professional software engineering life needs to know where the code comes from and what its license is. I understand, I agree with it. But that doesn't mean that code produced by an AI that did learn from GPL code has to be licensed under GPL. Verbatim copies of sufficient high originality, so that copyright applies: Sure. And that's where there is some risk of Copilot going wrong. But that's not the primary output of Copilot nor its goal.
    - louthy 5y ago
      > And that's where there is some risk of Copilot going wrong. But that's not the primary output of Copilot nor its goal. It took no more than 24 hours for the verbatim code to appear in the wild. It's irrelevant if it's the primary goal or not, if it can happen once then it can happen again; therefore (I believe) it's an existential risk to any organisation that uses it for their own products.
- stefan_ 5y ago
  This is a clown take that was planted in you by the GitHub comments on this issue. Nobody cares particularly if you feed data into an algorithm of your choice. I can feed data into a hash algorithm all day and that won't come back to bite me. This particular algorithm isn't learning anything, it's a big pattern matching/information retrieval system. It wasn't fed tokens, AST, constructs, type information, it was fed pure source code hoping the oblique magic in between would make it develop understanding. Nothing of the sort happened and it is instead regurgitating input data verbatim, which is the obvious copyright issue at hand.
  - onli 5y ago
    You are making it sound as if the system only copies full functions verbatim, but that's not the case. See https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitation#results https://docs.github.com/en/github/copilot/research-recitatio... (as linked in a different comment thread here). And btw, clowns take? That's no way to enter into a productive discussion. > Nobody cares particularly if you feed data into an algorithm of your choice. I can feed data into a hash algorithm all day and that won't come back to bite me. I showed examples to the contrary in my other comment.
    - louthy 5y ago
      > You are making it sound as if the system only copies full functions verbatim It doesn't only do that, but it does do that [1]. And that is the issue. It doesn't matter if it only does this 1% of the time, it's enough to be high risk. [1] https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309

cmpb 5y ago

Has that been proven? It's possible it's only doing that due to a small training set

k__ 5y ago

I used it and I had the impression that it understood my code, sometimes at least. It once wrote an API client for a rather idiosyncratic interface I just implemented.

drath 5y ago

More like braindead because it was trained on an unfiltered set of data without checking licenses. In effect, they've created a code pirating tool.