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I see this argument over and over again, and it is so flawed that it is hard to bear. There is no equal sign between a person and a program. There is also tha

I see this argument over and over again, and it is so flawed that it is hard to bear. There is no equal sign between a person and a program. There is also that thing called "scale" that is critical to the interpretation of the action. Is eating meat fine? - maybe. Is eating all animals OK? - Hmm...

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago
> Is eating meat fine? - maybe. Is eating all animals OK? - Hmm... This argument is hardly less flawed than the one you are criticizing. And you statement that 'there is no equal sign ...' is also unconvincing, as we're not equating these two, but the process of learning, which is quite similar.
- jimktrains2 4y ago
  > but the process of learning, which is quite similar. Thats the thing, there is no reason to think that they are similar.
  - falcor84 4y ago
    What do you mean? What is this definition of "learning" that would exclude machine learning?
    - rwmj 4y ago
      Can a human read and learn every single line of code on github?
      - TuringTest 4y ago
        If an excavator is digging a trench so large that no human could dig it by hand, does that mean that what the excavator is doing can't be called digging?
        rwmj 4y ago
        We can see that the way a human digs and the way an excavator digs are similar, except for the matter of scale. We don't know if the way humans study code is the same way that Copilot learns. Learning methods aside, humans do seem to be far more sophisticated about the ways they use code (understanding subtleties of copyright, attribution and so on) compared to Copilot.
        TuringTest 4y ago
        > We don't know if the way humans study code is the same way that Copilot learns. It may well be so. I was arguing with respect to your previous post, in which you stated as a relevant difference merely the size of the job.
    - jimktrains2 4y ago
      I'm not going to have an epistemological debate on what is knowledge or skill. Humans are more lossy and able to bring in much more varied knowledge and experience in ways a computer cannot. Ai/ml is not artificial general intelligence. It's a mathematical model.
      - falcor84 4y ago
        I don't think we need epistemology here, and can instead keep it at the level of semantics. According to the definitions I'm use to, an AI/ML system is not just a mathematical model, but rather a concrete implementation of an information processing system, which when treated as a black box also applies to a brain.
- jackdaniel 4y ago
  I've touched two things - that's why they were put in separate paragraphs. Let me spell it out in different words: 1. People have certain rights, duties and prohibitions. Equating the right of George Lucas to use ideas he saw with rights of a machine to do that misses the point by the same measure as asserting that MS enslaves the copilot, but in the opposite direction. 2. Scale does matter. If I'm an ordinary person then the act of eating won't ruin the ecosystem. Now imagine a construct that operates under the same principle of eating, but its jaw, stomach and speed of eating is many magnitudes larger - do we apply same limitations to both, because the principle of eating is the same? Also, since I'm spelling things out, the fact that I'm seeing the same argument many times over, and that it is so obviously flawed, makes me think that this is a symptom of astroturfing.
  - TuringTest 4y ago
    > People have certain rights, duties and prohibitions. Equating the right of George Lucas to use ideas he saw with rights of a machine to do that misses the point Hardly relevant, given that the machine has no rights, so no one is equating those with anything. The point is that the machine is doing automated learning on behalf of the developers who are training it, so what should be decided is whether those very human people have a right to train their model in that way.
    - jackdaniel 4y ago
      The op hypothetical assertion was that there is no difference between person and machine being 'inspired' by some creative work, so if we don't pursue George Lucas then why would we pursue copilot? And the thing is that the machine does not benefit from the same rights as a person, so we can't absolve MS from responsibility because "it does a similar thing to what people do". So, to add one more point to spell out: the context matters! ;)
- hoseja 4y ago
  You're right. One is eating meat, the other is slaughtering all wildlife in an industrial meatgrinder.
albertzeyer 4y ago
The question is not whether a person is equal to a program. The question is whether a person is doing the same as Copilot for this particular case, i.e. reading source code to learn. You have not really given any argument why this is not the case. Or maybe your reference to scale? So only because Copilot has read more code than a human possibly could, that makes it different? But why exactly is reading a bit of code fine w.r.t. copyright, but reading more code suddenly violates copyright? Note that the reason why Copilot needs more code to learn is just because the learning currently is not as efficient as for humans.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  > But why exactly is reading a bit of code fine w.r.t. copyright, but reading more code suddenly violates copyright? In all fairness, the article mentions the Fair Use doctrine. You could make the argument that reading a bit of code is allowed, but doing it at a large scale would not be covered as an exemption to copyright.
  - albertzeyer 4y ago
    But where is the limit then? Counting all the code I have read in my life, it's also quite a lot.

Andrew_nenakhov 4y ago

> Is eating meat fine? - maybe. Is eating all animals OK? - Hmm... This argument is hardly less flawed than the one you are criticizing. And you statement that 'there is no equal sign ...' is also unconvincing, as we're not equating these two, but the process of learning, which is quite similar.

jimktrains2 4y ago
> but the process of learning, which is quite similar. Thats the thing, there is no reason to think that they are similar.
- falcor84 4y ago
  What do you mean? What is this definition of "learning" that would exclude machine learning?
  - rwmj 4y ago
    Can a human read and learn every single line of code on github?
    - TuringTest 4y ago
      If an excavator is digging a trench so large that no human could dig it by hand, does that mean that what the excavator is doing can't be called digging?
      - rwmj 4y ago
        We can see that the way a human digs and the way an excavator digs are similar, except for the matter of scale. We don't know if the way humans study code is the same way that Copilot learns. Learning methods aside, humans do seem to be far more sophisticated about the ways they use code (understanding subtleties of copyright, attribution and so on) compared to Copilot.
        TuringTest 4y ago
        > We don't know if the way humans study code is the same way that Copilot learns. It may well be so. I was arguing with respect to your previous post, in which you stated as a relevant difference merely the size of the job.
  - jimktrains2 4y ago
    I'm not going to have an epistemological debate on what is knowledge or skill. Humans are more lossy and able to bring in much more varied knowledge and experience in ways a computer cannot. Ai/ml is not artificial general intelligence. It's a mathematical model.
    - falcor84 4y ago
      I don't think we need epistemology here, and can instead keep it at the level of semantics. According to the definitions I'm use to, an AI/ML system is not just a mathematical model, but rather a concrete implementation of an information processing system, which when treated as a black box also applies to a brain.
jackdaniel 4y ago
I've touched two things - that's why they were put in separate paragraphs. Let me spell it out in different words: 1. People have certain rights, duties and prohibitions. Equating the right of George Lucas to use ideas he saw with rights of a machine to do that misses the point by the same measure as asserting that MS enslaves the copilot, but in the opposite direction. 2. Scale does matter. If I'm an ordinary person then the act of eating won't ruin the ecosystem. Now imagine a construct that operates under the same principle of eating, but its jaw, stomach and speed of eating is many magnitudes larger - do we apply same limitations to both, because the principle of eating is the same? Also, since I'm spelling things out, the fact that I'm seeing the same argument many times over, and that it is so obviously flawed, makes me think that this is a symptom of astroturfing.
- TuringTest 4y ago
  > People have certain rights, duties and prohibitions. Equating the right of George Lucas to use ideas he saw with rights of a machine to do that misses the point Hardly relevant, given that the machine has no rights, so no one is equating those with anything. The point is that the machine is doing automated learning on behalf of the developers who are training it, so what should be decided is whether those very human people have a right to train their model in that way.
  - jackdaniel 4y ago
    The op hypothetical assertion was that there is no difference between person and machine being 'inspired' by some creative work, so if we don't pursue George Lucas then why would we pursue copilot? And the thing is that the machine does not benefit from the same rights as a person, so we can't absolve MS from responsibility because "it does a similar thing to what people do". So, to add one more point to spell out: the context matters! ;)
hoseja 4y ago
You're right. One is eating meat, the other is slaughtering all wildlife in an industrial meatgrinder.

albertzeyer 4y ago

The question is not whether a person is equal to a program. The question is whether a person is doing the same as Copilot for this particular case, i.e. reading source code to learn. You have not really given any argument why this is not the case. Or maybe your reference to scale? So only because Copilot has read more code than a human possibly could, that makes it different? But why exactly is reading a bit of code fine w.r.t. copyright, but reading more code suddenly violates copyright? Note that the reason why Copilot needs more code to learn is just because the learning currently is not as efficient as for humans.

TuringTest 4y ago
> But why exactly is reading a bit of code fine w.r.t. copyright, but reading more code suddenly violates copyright? In all fairness, the article mentions the Fair Use doctrine. You could make the argument that reading a bit of code is allowed, but doing it at a large scale would not be covered as an exemption to copyright.
- albertzeyer 4y ago
  But where is the limit then? Counting all the code I have read in my life, it's also quite a lot.