4 ms·

It's happily spitting out licenses and copyright notices with other people's names on them, it's pretty clearly half-baked.

sellyme 5y ago
While that's obviously a UX flaw that definitely shouldn't have made it to release, I find it hard to envision it ever actually being a problem. If someone's accepting auto-generated copyright notices and licenses that don't actually apply, they can't really point the finger at Github - it's called "Copilot", not "Pilot". The problem with full snippets of arbitrary obscure repositories being copy+pasted is that there's no realistic way for a user to know if that's happening without putting in more effort than just writing the code themselves, somewhat defeating the point. That's not really case when the first line of the file contains "(C) Someone Else 2003".
- abrokenpipe 5y ago
  Thats much more than just a UX flaw, it's clearly showing that copilot just regurgitates code snippets from other peoples opensource. Which draws back to the issue of "did copilot AI actually learn from other peoples code or is it just copy+pasting other peoples code?". I don't think people are concerned about copilot user's liability/productivity.
  - sellyme 5y ago
    > it's clearly showing that copilot just regurgitates code snippets from other peoples opensource You consider a license file to be code?
    - abrokenpipe 5y ago
      That's irrelevant, if copilot is copy+pasting random licenses then it's definitely copy+pasting code as well, I don't see how this could be hard to believe.
      - sellyme 5y ago
        > That's irrelevant You said "copilot just regurgitates code snippets", and the example given wasn't a code snippet. Of course it's relevant. > if copilot is copy+pasting random licenses then it's definitely copy+pasting code as well Not at all. Copy+pasting licenses is intended behaviour. That's the entire point of having standard licenses. No-one would want Copilot to try to make its own entirely new licenses, therefore it's very trivial to imagine a piece of software designed to allow for licenses to be copied verbatim, but not allow that for any significant chunk of code. Copilot does not appear to be designed like that, but that doesn't make the logic correct. We only know that it isn't designed like that because we looked for an example of it actually copying arbitrary code. > I don't see how this could be hard to believe I don't care about believing it, I care about whether or not it's true. If someone claims to have seen Copilot copy+pasting code, and when asked for evidence their only example is it copy+pasting some license boilerplate, they're just straight-up lying - and worse, potentially drowning out any real examples that exist.
        dogecoinbase 5y ago
        Other people here and elsewhere have demonstrated direct code copying. It's not hard to find. The license/copyright notice (and note that the copyright notice with the names of individuals easily invalidates your assertion regarding boilerplate) issue is that it's clear that no due diligence was done on this product. No one (at least no one with the authority to stop it) spent any time reviewing what this product could produce, because _producing a copyright notice with a random developer's name on it_ is so beyond the pale that even the most cursory review by someone who knew literally anything about the law or copyright would have stopped it in its tracks.

sellyme 5y ago

While that's obviously a UX flaw that definitely shouldn't have made it to release, I find it hard to envision it ever actually being a problem. If someone's accepting auto-generated copyright notices and licenses that don't actually apply, they can't really point the finger at Github - it's called "Copilot", not "Pilot". The problem with full snippets of arbitrary obscure repositories being copy+pasted is that there's no realistic way for a user to know if that's happening without putting in more effort than just writing the code themselves, somewhat defeating the point. That's not really case when the first line of the file contains "(C) Someone Else 2003".

abrokenpipe 5y ago
Thats much more than just a UX flaw, it's clearly showing that copilot just regurgitates code snippets from other peoples opensource. Which draws back to the issue of "did copilot AI actually learn from other peoples code or is it just copy+pasting other peoples code?". I don't think people are concerned about copilot user's liability/productivity.
- sellyme 5y ago
  > it's clearly showing that copilot just regurgitates code snippets from other peoples opensource You consider a license file to be code?
  - abrokenpipe 5y ago
    That's irrelevant, if copilot is copy+pasting random licenses then it's definitely copy+pasting code as well, I don't see how this could be hard to believe.
    - sellyme 5y ago
      > That's irrelevant You said "copilot just regurgitates code snippets", and the example given wasn't a code snippet. Of course it's relevant. > if copilot is copy+pasting random licenses then it's definitely copy+pasting code as well Not at all. Copy+pasting licenses is intended behaviour. That's the entire point of having standard licenses. No-one would want Copilot to try to make its own entirely new licenses, therefore it's very trivial to imagine a piece of software designed to allow for licenses to be copied verbatim, but not allow that for any significant chunk of code. Copilot does not appear to be designed like that, but that doesn't make the logic correct. We only know that it isn't designed like that because we looked for an example of it actually copying arbitrary code. > I don't see how this could be hard to believe I don't care about believing it, I care about whether or not it's true. If someone claims to have seen Copilot copy+pasting code, and when asked for evidence their only example is it copy+pasting some license boilerplate, they're just straight-up lying - and worse, potentially drowning out any real examples that exist.
      - dogecoinbase 5y ago
        Other people here and elsewhere have demonstrated direct code copying. It's not hard to find. The license/copyright notice (and note that the copyright notice with the names of individuals easily invalidates your assertion regarding boilerplate) issue is that it's clear that no due diligence was done on this product. No one (at least no one with the authority to stop it) spent any time reviewing what this product could produce, because _producing a copyright notice with a random developer's name on it_ is so beyond the pale that even the most cursory review by someone who knew literally anything about the law or copyright would have stopped it in its tracks.