4 ms·
If you don't want people to learn from your code then don't open source it. Learning via LLM vs person learning is a distinction that sounds unenforceable in pr
by moonchrome 3y ago
If you don't want people to learn from your code then don't open source it. Learning via LLM vs person learning is a distinction that sounds unenforceable in practice.
- bee_rider 3y agoThe stealing open source code is generally extremely difficult to prevent in practice; nobody knows by default if you copy-paste some open source code into a closed code base. But this shouldn’t prevent us from calling out bad behavior when we do see it. Legally, of course, LLMs are not people. They don’t have the same rights as people, and it isn’t obvious whether or not they can legally generate new IP. They operate by a complicated but essentially mechanical process, and it is pretty novel to say that such a process could be used to remove copyrights.
- rectang 3y agoThere will eventually be a court case where an LLM reproduces creative code verbatim which clears the de minimis threshold. For example: https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 https://twitter.com/mitsuhiko/status/1410886329924194309 But the defendant won't be Microsoft — they just provided a tool, and that's legal. No, the defendant will be the downstream consumer who incorporated the code spat out by the LLM. It doesn't matter whether the LLM "learned" — intent is irrelevant and the defendant will have committed copyright violation regardless. The LLM can't copyright-wash the code — nobody can.