6 ms·

> The question is ultimately going to come down to - "Is Copilot the same as a human programmer reading a lot of GPL code and rehashing, in a non-infringing way

by jhugo 4y ago

> The question is ultimately going to come down to - "Is Copilot the same as a human programmer reading a lot of GPL code and rehashing, in a non-infringing way, the algorithms, functions, and designs used in a lot of FOSS? Or is Copilot performing more of a copy and paste pastiche of code that is protected by intellectual property law?" Of course it isn't the same as a human programmer doing anything. It's a complex piece of software, which we happen to misuse the term "AI" to describe, but it is not intelligent.

mtkhaos 4y ago
Technically just advanced indexing of code snippets
- vinnymac 4y ago
  Precisely. I don't see a difference between what Google indexes on its search engine, and what CoPilot can recommend. Google has been and still does get slapped on the wrist when they don't respond to take down requests. It seems this is missing from CoPilot currently, and will open them up to a number of lawsuits in the future if it continues to operate as it does.
  - merpnderp 4y ago
    Except Google isn’t creating anything new, Copilot is. I’ve had it kick out some very interesting short stories based on Sherlock Holmes, so if I published those would they infringe?
    - jhugo 4y ago
      You have no idea where they came from, or whether they are as new as you assume. Maybe they'd infringe, maybe they wouldn't!
      - merpnderp 4y ago
        Google returned nothing which contained exact matches of some of the more interesting dialogue. It would be a serious find - worthy of a paper - to disprove that GPT-3 is generating novel text/code.
        jhugo 4y ago
        It's easy to prove that it sometimes regurgitates text verbatim — just play with it for a while. Having certainty that any given span of text/code is novel is extraordinarily difficult.
      - InvertedRhodium 4y ago
        Where does human creativity come from?
  - nojs 4y ago
    > I don't see a difference between what Google indexes on its search engine, and what CoPilot can recommend. That is an extremely disingenuous take. It produces novel output, so is not merely an “index” in any sense of the word.
    - greyface- 4y ago
      Each search results page is novel and unique. Even two different users making the same query will get different results thanks to the "search personalization" Google is doing these days.
      - dahfizz 4y ago
        Google search doesn't synthesize anything. It collects results and orders them according to an algorithm. Copilot and similar language models can synthesize new text. That's clearly different than just presenting existing text.
        belorn 4y ago
        Copilot can't create new novel concepts. In the end it is just an complex mathematical formula that return a set of code references with a set of length determined by the math. The illusion of creativity is similar to that of technology. Sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and sufficient advanced math is indistinguishable from intelligence. The relation between AI and math is the same as the relation between magic and technology.
- UncleMeat 4y ago
  All of the large language models can emit text that has never been seen in the training set (unless you go so far to consider each character to be a snippet).
  - BeefWellington 4y ago
    They can also emit text that it verbatim copied. Infringement isn't about how the infringing system works, it's about the product of that work.
    - jhugo 4y ago
      > Infringement isn't about how the infringing system works, it's about the product of that work. Exactly this. It makes zero difference that you produced your infringing work with the help of a program that happens to be extremely complex and marketed as "AI".
  - thesz 4y ago
    So do smaller models and I have to note smaller models are better at that.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
A law that uses the archaic terms "copy and paste", referring to a time when people would make an analog photocopy of a document written using a typewriter, trim it out with scissors or a knife, and glue it to their book with the pasty remains from boiling animal collagen cannot be trusted to apply word-for-word in a time when technology has obsoleted the glue, typewriter, xerox machine, and even the paper. It is not the same as a human, no, but it's not hard to choose a definition of the word "intelligent" that can accurately describe something that can be done by a program. When a human walks around a puddle, are they demonstrating intelligence? When a horse avoids stepping in a hole, is the horse intelligent? When a robotic vacuum avoids a stairway, is it intelligent? When a self-driving car avoids a bollard, is that intelligent? Whether there's a being inside the device that believes it experiences consciousness or not, the same outcome happens. A Searle's Chinese Room that produces copies of Chinese IP, a trained monkey that does so, or a human that does the same thing, the outcome is very similar.
jazzyjackson 4y ago
of course it's not intelligent, but we still have to decide how the law applies to the actions of software, or otherwise re-frame the whole thing to include the co-pilot developers doing the copyright infringement when they trained the model - not the current discussion which gives agency to the IDE plug-in "choosing" a code snippet to paste.
- jhugo 4y ago
  I don't see how the way the software was built is particularly relevant. It's just a tool used by the developer; the onus is on the developer to ensure they don't infringe the licenses of the source code they incorporate in their software. Since Copilot makes it impossible to know where it's barfing code up from and what license that code is under, a developer who cares about not getting sued probably needs to avoid using Copilot.
  - jazzyjackson 4y ago
    Eh, the law is about making a copy. If my IDE plug-in fills in some code, the question is, did I copy the code, did the robot copy the code, or did the developers that wrote "cp github.db ~/trainingset" copy the code?
    - ycombobreaker 4y ago
      The authors of the tool created something that can be used for copyright infringement. The tool itself lacks agency, it did what it was programmed to do. If you took the tool's suggestions and proceeded to published a derivative work, you may have infringed. This really doesn't feel any different from P2P filesharing services. Rightsholders have targeted tool publishers in the past, because they are the largest single target and not anonymous; but ultimately the infringement is performed by the end user.
    - jhugo 4y ago
      This isn't complicated at all. You copied the code, which isn't an issue until you then go on to do something which infringes the license (e.g. publish under a different license, publish binaries without publishing source, publish without attribution, whatever it is that the license requires).
Paradigma11 4y ago
If it gives the same output as a human programmer for the same input, why would it be legally relevant if one system has the intelligent property?
- remram 4y ago
  But that's the whole point of copyright. The same piece of code you copy from a Google search can legally be used by you if your developer came up with it, and not if Oracle came up with it. Where you copied it from is the entire point.

by jhugo 4y ago

mtkhaos 4y ago

Technically just advanced indexing of code snippets

vinnymac 4y ago
Precisely. I don't see a difference between what Google indexes on its search engine, and what CoPilot can recommend. Google has been and still does get slapped on the wrist when they don't respond to take down requests. It seems this is missing from CoPilot currently, and will open them up to a number of lawsuits in the future if it continues to operate as it does.
- merpnderp 4y ago
  Except Google isn’t creating anything new, Copilot is. I’ve had it kick out some very interesting short stories based on Sherlock Holmes, so if I published those would they infringe?
  - jhugo 4y ago
    You have no idea where they came from, or whether they are as new as you assume. Maybe they'd infringe, maybe they wouldn't!
    - merpnderp 4y ago
      Google returned nothing which contained exact matches of some of the more interesting dialogue. It would be a serious find - worthy of a paper - to disprove that GPT-3 is generating novel text/code.
      - jhugo 4y ago
        It's easy to prove that it sometimes regurgitates text verbatim — just play with it for a while. Having certainty that any given span of text/code is novel is extraordinarily difficult.
    - InvertedRhodium 4y ago
      Where does human creativity come from?
- nojs 4y ago
  > I don't see a difference between what Google indexes on its search engine, and what CoPilot can recommend. That is an extremely disingenuous take. It produces novel output, so is not merely an “index” in any sense of the word.
  - greyface- 4y ago
    Each search results page is novel and unique. Even two different users making the same query will get different results thanks to the "search personalization" Google is doing these days.
    - dahfizz 4y ago
      Google search doesn't synthesize anything. It collects results and orders them according to an algorithm. Copilot and similar language models can synthesize new text. That's clearly different than just presenting existing text.
      - belorn 4y ago
        Copilot can't create new novel concepts. In the end it is just an complex mathematical formula that return a set of code references with a set of length determined by the math. The illusion of creativity is similar to that of technology. Sufficient advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and sufficient advanced math is indistinguishable from intelligence. The relation between AI and math is the same as the relation between magic and technology.
UncleMeat 4y ago
All of the large language models can emit text that has never been seen in the training set (unless you go so far to consider each character to be a snippet).
- BeefWellington 4y ago
  They can also emit text that it verbatim copied. Infringement isn't about how the infringing system works, it's about the product of that work.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    > Infringement isn't about how the infringing system works, it's about the product of that work. Exactly this. It makes zero difference that you produced your infringing work with the help of a program that happens to be extremely complex and marketed as "AI".
- thesz 4y ago
  So do smaller models and I have to note smaller models are better at that.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

A law that uses the archaic terms "copy and paste", referring to a time when people would make an analog photocopy of a document written using a typewriter, trim it out with scissors or a knife, and glue it to their book with the pasty remains from boiling animal collagen cannot be trusted to apply word-for-word in a time when technology has obsoleted the glue, typewriter, xerox machine, and even the paper. It is not the same as a human, no, but it's not hard to choose a definition of the word "intelligent" that can accurately describe something that can be done by a program. When a human walks around a puddle, are they demonstrating intelligence? When a horse avoids stepping in a hole, is the horse intelligent? When a robotic vacuum avoids a stairway, is it intelligent? When a self-driving car avoids a bollard, is that intelligent? Whether there's a being inside the device that believes it experiences consciousness or not, the same outcome happens. A Searle's Chinese Room that produces copies of Chinese IP, a trained monkey that does so, or a human that does the same thing, the outcome is very similar.

jazzyjackson 4y ago

of course it's not intelligent, but we still have to decide how the law applies to the actions of software, or otherwise re-frame the whole thing to include the co-pilot developers doing the copyright infringement when they trained the model - not the current discussion which gives agency to the IDE plug-in "choosing" a code snippet to paste.

jhugo 4y ago
I don't see how the way the software was built is particularly relevant. It's just a tool used by the developer; the onus is on the developer to ensure they don't infringe the licenses of the source code they incorporate in their software. Since Copilot makes it impossible to know where it's barfing code up from and what license that code is under, a developer who cares about not getting sued probably needs to avoid using Copilot.
- jazzyjackson 4y ago
  Eh, the law is about making a copy. If my IDE plug-in fills in some code, the question is, did I copy the code, did the robot copy the code, or did the developers that wrote "cp github.db ~/trainingset" copy the code?
  - ycombobreaker 4y ago
    The authors of the tool created something that can be used for copyright infringement. The tool itself lacks agency, it did what it was programmed to do. If you took the tool's suggestions and proceeded to published a derivative work, you may have infringed. This really doesn't feel any different from P2P filesharing services. Rightsholders have targeted tool publishers in the past, because they are the largest single target and not anonymous; but ultimately the infringement is performed by the end user.
  - jhugo 4y ago
    This isn't complicated at all. You copied the code, which isn't an issue until you then go on to do something which infringes the license (e.g. publish under a different license, publish binaries without publishing source, publish without attribution, whatever it is that the license requires).

Paradigma11 4y ago

If it gives the same output as a human programmer for the same input, why would it be legally relevant if one system has the intelligent property?

remram 4y ago
But that's the whole point of copyright. The same piece of code you copy from a Google search can legally be used by you if your developer came up with it, and not if Oracle came up with it. Where you copied it from is the entire point.