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> to escape the privacy issue Genuine question, do you not use GitHub for things other than copilot? It seems to me either the privacy issues of copilot are ov

• moonchrome 4y ago
  This - if you're hosting code on GH you're covered by worst case unless you're worried they are collecting other telemetry.
  • RussianCow 4y ago
    No, you're not, unless you never edit any code that you don't commit. I write scratch code all the time, and I can think of at least a few times where I hard-coded things into these files that probably should never leave my work computer.
    • moonchrome 4y ago
      Agreed, would be good if you could whitelist only source accessible from the git repo (eg. won't work on gitignored files unless explicitly activated).
• littlestymaar 4y ago
  > Genuine question, do you not use GitHub for things other than copilot? I certainly not use Github for everything.
  • EntrePrescott 4y ago
    Neither do I. For that matter, I don't use it for anything where privacy is a requirement (be it for personal or for business/work reasons). That being said, I've way too often encountered people for whom git oddly only exists in the form of Github, to the point of those being synonymous to them. The concept of a self-hosted repo seems totally foreign to them, and the only local git trees they have is what their IDE created for them in the directory of their checked out or created source project. It's weird, but such people exist… and lots of them.
    • tough 4y ago
      There's some people who only learned GitHub and never learned Git. It's like learning react first ,and html+css later, it's doable but a bit convoluted
• wongarsu 4y ago
  I have files open in VSCode that aren't committed to Git, and that I wouldn't be allowed to commit there even in private repos (customer data covered by GDPR). In this context I think it's important to note the distinction between "Copilot for Individuals" and "Copilot for Business", because for twice the money you potentially get a lot more privacy: > What data does Copilot for Individuals collect? > [...] Depending on your preferred telemetry settings, GitHub Copilot may also collect and retain the following, collectively referred to as “code snippets”: source code that you are editing, related files and other files open in the same IDE or editor, URLs of repositories and files path. > What data does Copilot for Business collect? > [...] GitHub Copilot transmits snippets of your code from your IDE to GitHub to provide Suggestions to you. Code snippets data is only transmitted in real-time to return Suggestions, and is discarded once a Suggestion is returned. Copilot for Business does not retain any Code Snippets Data. https://github.com/features/copilot https://github.com/features/copilot
  • blibble 4y ago
    unless that's directly in the contract, I'd not trust Microsoft to discard anything that might be of value in a training dataset at some point in the future say, if training is determined to be fair use
    • SquareWheel 4y ago
      At the very least, it has its own privacy policy. https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/github-copilot-for-business-privacy-statement https://docs.github.com/en/site-policy/privacy-policies/gith...
  • joshspankit 4y ago
    I’m now curious if the CoPilot feedback loop is going to end up with someone getting a suggestion for an existing API key.
    • jachee 4y ago
      I would hope they’re training it to recognize and not suggest API keys. I would emphasize that as an explicitly important part of its initial definition-of-self/prompt.
• colinsane 4y ago
  “privacy” sits in a broader sea that includes “control”, “customization” and “lock-in”. i’ve been using the GPT family of tools less than otherwise because they’re constantly changing in ways that do or will disrupt any workflow i integrate them into: new guard-rails are added such that new versions explicitly don’t support use-cases the old versions do, etc. self-hosting solves those problems: if done right, it gives me a thing which is static until i explicitly choose to upgrade it, so i can actually integrate it into more longterm workflows. if enough others also do this, there’s some expectation that when i do upgrade it i’ll have a few options (models) if the mainline one degrades in some way from my ideal. LLMs are one of the more difficult things to self-host here due to the hardware requirements. there’s enough interest from enthusiasts right now that i’m hopeful we’ll see ways to overcome that though: pooling resources, clever forms of caching, etc.
  • EntrePrescott 4y ago
    > pooling resources though that too comes with its own set of privacy issues, especially when done at a larger scale with strangers on the internet as opposed to just with your personally known and trusted buddies… and rare are the people for whom the latter happen to contain enough people with strong enough hardware that that pool would be sufficient.
• DanHulton 4y ago
  It's not too weird a position that some people are mistrustful of Microsoft and use other version control solutions, but want to be able to take advantage of these new classes of tools where they help. Personally, yes, I do host with Github, bit previously that was a very well-defined boundary - only what I deliberately committed and pushed went to them. Now, it's potentially anything in my editor, so I make sure to use another program for scratch files. I probably don't have anything I'd really care about them getting their hands on, but still, it's better not to get in a bad habit and then slip up someday, pasting in private or sensitive details without thinking. If I can eliminate that as a potential source of mistakes, so much the better.
• pmontra 4y ago
  API keys, passwords, email addresses, etc. We write those data with our editor but we don't commit them to vc and github never see them. Copilot must not see them too.