3 ms·

You also don't say that if a human has learned from GPL code, that all code that this human produces in the future is GPL licensed.

rfw300 3y ago
Computers aren’t humans. There’s no reason licenses should treat them the same way when completely different considerations of fairness and economic impact apply.
contravariant 3y ago
Humans are also not allowed to simply regurgitate GPL code verbatim, even if they do it by committing the code to memory. There's a reason clean room implementations are a thing, sometimes even the appearance of someone possibly remembering code verbatim is risky enough to warrant extra care. That said usually the risks are acceptable even without extra measures because you can hold the humans responsible. Now just because you don't understand a language model and call its fitting procedure 'learning' doesn't mean that it is doing anything even remotely similar. And even if it does then it has no legal responsibilities so if you want to distribute it then you as the distributor need to assume responsibility for all the copyrights such an act could possibly infringe. There are measures you can take to try to prevent the information from any one code base from entering the model verbatim, by severely restricting the model size or carefully obfuscating the data, but to my knowledge nobody has used any method that gives any proven measure of security.
- olalonde 3y ago
  If an AI model regurgitates GPL licensed code verbatim, that code is already protected by copyright and there is no need to update the GPL to cover it specifically.
  - CableNinja 3y ago
    Except when the GPL header is missing from said code and the user has no idea it is protected, and/or the developer has no idea it was stolen
    - olalonde 3y ago
      If the license is missing, it is a violation of the license and there is legal recourse. Just like if someone did the same thing manually.
      - CableNinja 3y ago
        Yes, and thats my point. AI wont include it, user wont know it should be GPL, developer wont know it was stolen. This is a whole can of problematic worms
        olalonde 3y ago
        This can be solved with automated tools that review your code for copyright violations. But to be honest, this is a non-issue. Copilot (and co) rarely outputs copyrighted code verbatim and when it does, it's usually too small or too trivial to fall under copyright protection. I made a prediction last year that no one will get sued from using Copilot generated code and I believe it has held so far[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31849027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31849027
- albertzeyer 3y ago
  I understand language models quite well. I have published research on this on renowned conferences. I also know how they learn. And I know how the biological brain learns. The differences are just technical. The underlying concept is really the same: Both learn by adjusting the neuronal strengths between neurons based on what they see. Legal responsibilities is sth different. This is up to politics to decide. My argument is purely on the fact that what humans do and what machines do is extremely similar, and the differences are just technical and don't really matter here. This is often misunderstood by people who think that machines don't really learn like humans.
xigoi 3y ago
You can very much be sued for working on a proprietary project and then trying to reproduce it somewhere else. That's why clean-room reimplementations have to make sure that no contributor has seen the original code.

rfw300 3y ago

Computers aren’t humans. There’s no reason licenses should treat them the same way when completely different considerations of fairness and economic impact apply.

contravariant 3y ago

Humans are also not allowed to simply regurgitate GPL code verbatim, even if they do it by committing the code to memory. There's a reason clean room implementations are a thing, sometimes even the appearance of someone possibly remembering code verbatim is risky enough to warrant extra care. That said usually the risks are acceptable even without extra measures because you can hold the humans responsible. Now just because you don't understand a language model and call its fitting procedure 'learning' doesn't mean that it is doing anything even remotely similar. And even if it does then it has no legal responsibilities so if you want to distribute it then you as the distributor need to assume responsibility for all the copyrights such an act could possibly infringe. There are measures you can take to try to prevent the information from any one code base from entering the model verbatim, by severely restricting the model size or carefully obfuscating the data, but to my knowledge nobody has used any method that gives any proven measure of security.

olalonde 3y ago
If an AI model regurgitates GPL licensed code verbatim, that code is already protected by copyright and there is no need to update the GPL to cover it specifically.
- CableNinja 3y ago
  Except when the GPL header is missing from said code and the user has no idea it is protected, and/or the developer has no idea it was stolen
  - olalonde 3y ago
    If the license is missing, it is a violation of the license and there is legal recourse. Just like if someone did the same thing manually.
    - CableNinja 3y ago
      Yes, and thats my point. AI wont include it, user wont know it should be GPL, developer wont know it was stolen. This is a whole can of problematic worms
      - olalonde 3y ago
        This can be solved with automated tools that review your code for copyright violations. But to be honest, this is a non-issue. Copilot (and co) rarely outputs copyrighted code verbatim and when it does, it's usually too small or too trivial to fall under copyright protection. I made a prediction last year that no one will get sued from using Copilot generated code and I believe it has held so far[0]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31849027 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31849027
albertzeyer 3y ago
I understand language models quite well. I have published research on this on renowned conferences. I also know how they learn. And I know how the biological brain learns. The differences are just technical. The underlying concept is really the same: Both learn by adjusting the neuronal strengths between neurons based on what they see. Legal responsibilities is sth different. This is up to politics to decide. My argument is purely on the fact that what humans do and what machines do is extremely similar, and the differences are just technical and don't really matter here. This is often misunderstood by people who think that machines don't really learn like humans.

xigoi 3y ago

You can very much be sued for working on a proprietary project and then trying to reproduce it somewhere else. That's why clean-room reimplementations have to make sure that no contributor has seen the original code.