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It's not the training of the models that's the problem, it's when the AI spits out "substantial portions of code", an important term in the GPL and with regard

It's not the training of the models that's the problem, it's when the AI spits out "substantial portions of code", an important term in the GPL and with regard to fair use law, that are exact, sometimes even including exact comments from specific codebases. This does violate the licenses. There's something quantitative in code that you don't get in drawings, drawings the unique quality is purely qualitative, so it is hard to demonstrate what exactly it was that was ripped off. When you find your exact words being returned by a code helper AI it's hard to pretend that it's not directly and plainly just copy pasting code snippets.

oneoff786 4y ago
It’s a dumb hill to die on. Doomed to fall to a layer of minor refactoring. If you say that’s the problem, you’ll have nothing to stand on later.
- andybak 4y ago
  On the contrary - the part that is problemmatic is the verbatim reproduction of copyrighted code. If that's fixed by a "minor refactoring" then there's no hill to die on. It's not AI code generation per se that's problemmatic - it's when it does things that are break current IP law. If you want to debate expanding IP law - that's a different discussion and one I would be rather sceptical about. I'd prefer the that IP law in general was rolled back - not forward.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Which is a fine point of view. But it’s not the one that many (most?) detractors actually hold. It would imply that you cannot offend open source licenses by doing something as simple as recreating a codebase in another language, thus eliminating the exact matches.
- robocat 4y ago
  > Doomed to fall to a layer of minor refactoring Not quite - there is a reason why https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design exists as a concept to workaround copyright, and the same concept could hold for ML models.
  - noobermin 4y ago
    Clean room design? Did the models train on art the trainers drew themselves?
noobermin 4y ago
I am going to go ahead and say it, some of you people are so far up your own ass that you don't realize it is the exact same thing. All of you are saying it's unique because you code but you don't understand art and can't pick out the things that are clearly copied from artists because it isn't exactly the same.
- friend_and_foe 4y ago
  I don't understand art, you're right, at least from an artist's perspective. Maybe you can enlighten me. So my current perspective is this: if a picture is drawn in a style similar to yours for example, that's not infringing, but if it's just a scrapbook collage of cutouts of your art it is, except where it's fair use. Would that be right? So the same applies, if an AI actually can help people write code by learning from existing code, that's fine, but if an AI just copy pastes code blocks that's not. Where am I going wrong here?

oneoff786 4y ago

It’s a dumb hill to die on. Doomed to fall to a layer of minor refactoring. If you say that’s the problem, you’ll have nothing to stand on later.

andybak 4y ago
On the contrary - the part that is problemmatic is the verbatim reproduction of copyrighted code. If that's fixed by a "minor refactoring" then there's no hill to die on. It's not AI code generation per se that's problemmatic - it's when it does things that are break current IP law. If you want to debate expanding IP law - that's a different discussion and one I would be rather sceptical about. I'd prefer the that IP law in general was rolled back - not forward.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  Which is a fine point of view. But it’s not the one that many (most?) detractors actually hold. It would imply that you cannot offend open source licenses by doing something as simple as recreating a codebase in another language, thus eliminating the exact matches.
robocat 4y ago
> Doomed to fall to a layer of minor refactoring Not quite - there is a reason why https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_room_design exists as a concept to workaround copyright, and the same concept could hold for ML models.
- noobermin 4y ago
  Clean room design? Did the models train on art the trainers drew themselves?

noobermin 4y ago

I am going to go ahead and say it, some of you people are so far up your own ass that you don't realize it is the exact same thing. All of you are saying it's unique because you code but you don't understand art and can't pick out the things that are clearly copied from artists because it isn't exactly the same.

friend_and_foe 4y ago
I don't understand art, you're right, at least from an artist's perspective. Maybe you can enlighten me. So my current perspective is this: if a picture is drawn in a style similar to yours for example, that's not infringing, but if it's just a scrapbook collage of cutouts of your art it is, except where it's fair use. Would that be right? So the same applies, if an AI actually can help people write code by learning from existing code, that's fine, but if an AI just copy pastes code blocks that's not. Where am I going wrong here?