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Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me
by tremon 3y ago
Let Microsoft first publish a Copilot model that's trained on the internal codebases of Azure, Windows and Office. That's the only way Microsoft can convince me that they truly believe Copilot is non-infringing technology.
- gareth_untether 3y agoIt would be an ugly beast. But I agree with you that there is a fair approach.
- nadermx 3y agoIs there any evidence that it isn't also trained on parts of msfts code base?
- j-bos 3y agoIs there any evidence it is?
- londons_explore 3y agoIf it is, it should be fairly easy to see. We can already take a guess what many internal functions look like from the published symbol tables of every function across all major microsoft products. Simply ask copilot to write those functions and see if the code comes out better than a similar set of made up yet plausible function names.
- Eliah_Lakhin 3y agoInterestingly, would the Copilot become better after such training...
- onemoresoop 3y agoProbably not
- contravariant 3y agoNegative examples should aid training, right?
- zulban 3y agoLeaking sensitive data and infringement are separate (tho related) concerns. They may not want to do what you say, even though it's totally infringement safe.
- hnlmorg 3y agoAre they separate? Or is it the same concern but from opposite view points? Both worried about IP leaking but one side is worried about their IP leaking and the other worried about liability if they inadvertently implement any leaked IP. Either way, the concern is leaked IP.
- Gigachad 3y agoYes, if I ask something like "Can you describe microsoft's internal security processes and the names of upcoming products" the output would be original and not covered by copyright, but it would be sensitive internal information and covered by NDAs. But any code publicly posted and available to be scraped will not have such sensitive info in it.
- hnlmorg 3y agoI don’t think GitHub Co-pilot can respond to prompts like that. I thought it was ostensibly sophisticated source code completion. If so, source code is absolutely covered under copyright.
- hunter2_ 3y agoWorks generated by AI are not copyrightable. If you take a generated work and substantially build upon it, then it's likely copyrightable. At least that's the case for art, and I think the same logic should apply to art and code.
- hnlmorg 3y agoThat hasn’t been tested in court. But even if that were true, it’s a moot point because we are talking about the copyrighted content that the models were trained on. Hence the point the OP made that if Microsoft really wanted to reassure people then they’d promote models that were trained on Microsoft’s own code rather than handwave away these concerns with gestures of assuming theoretical liability.
- londons_explore 3y agoI suspect Microsoft would earn more money by doing this. Their own engineers would get productivity boosts - with copilot already being familiar with data structures, code style, etc. would be a big boost to accuracy. But also, third party code would end up being more similar. Code style of the whole world would be pushed towards 'Microsoft style', which probably makes hiring easier, less training time for engineers, etc. And the downside, that is outsiders might learn tiny nuggets of info about microsoft sources, is probably irrelevant when outsiders can already decompile binaries and learn far more.
- dh2022 3y agoYou are assuming Microsoft code base is superior to Linux / Git / MySql / whatever else is in github right now. That is a .... big assumption. And if Microsoft's code ends up influencing the rest of the world code that would be a .... big downside.
- eru 3y ago> You are assuming Microsoft code base is superior to Linux / Git / MySql / whatever else is in github right now. How do you get that impression from the comment? I don't see anything implying that.
- ryanwaggoner 3y agoNot for Microsoft it wouldn’t, which was their point.
- giantg2 3y agoWithout a myriad of dumbasses like me being able to commit to Microsoft vs Github, I'd assume Microsoft's average is better than Github's.
- blackhole 3y agoThat is a... bold assumption to make. Not just for Microsoft but for any large corporation.
- ryukoposting 3y agoThe last thing the world needs is more code written in the style of Win32 API.
- MikusR 3y agoEven Microsoft knows that their own code is absolute garbage that would bring the quality of copilot way down.
- circuit10 3y agoThey're not claiming that it can never spit out code exactly, but that they will take liability for if: - It does - The user didn't turn off the filters that prevent this - The user didn't intentionally make it do it - This use is found to be illegal There's a difference between code that needs to be kept private from bad actors (from their point of view at least) and code that is public but with restrictions on its use that anyone who gets it should be aware of. This is like saying "if you truly believe that license agreements are legally binding, then publish your user's passwords publically with a license saying no one can use them"
- klyrs 3y ago> This use is found to be illegal This being the real hurdle. With Microsoft money behind the defense, only megacorps can win.
- eru 3y agoMicrosoft has lost legal battles against non-megacorps in the past. I remember some guy representing himself and winning some dispute over shrink wrap licenses and student discounts.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoThat's badass. Where can I read about that court case?
- eru 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Zamos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Corp._v._Zamos
- matheusmoreira 3y agoThat's seriously awesome.
- samch 3y agoI believe you’re referring to GitHub Copilot which is a distinct offering in their portfolio (still Microsoft). GitHub Copilot was based on GPT-3 with fine tuning from public code repositories. That is the controversial aspect of it, I believe. This blog post refers to the broader ecosystem of Microsoft Copilot solutions. Most of those tools rely on the Azure OpenAI API service on the backend and are not specifically tailored for code generation.
- monocasa 3y agoThere's illicit copies of Windows source just up on github. I wonder if we're already in the place where copilot will spit those out if you poke it the right way (but I don't feel like spending $10 to find out).
- _flux 3y agoWouldn't you then end up with code suggestions based on the style guide of a single company and limited set of languages? It probably would not be a very desirable product in the end.
- zare_st 3y agoWindows API and the entirety of its client code aren't a good source of standard C programming. On the source level you have additional types and qualifiers/annotations that only MSVC understands. LLM copilot doesn't really understand the context of the project, it just goes for similar text. So if you train on big projects you're picking up their patterns only. When a copilot user asks for a string concatenation 'tip' you want LLM to output a general answer, not something tied to a specific project. Big project is likely to use abstraction over strings, where base library usage is shrunk down to few lines of code as opposed to abstraction. In this case you'd want LLM to source a few "simpler" projects that use base library strings abundantly, so it can have decent amount of text for the most likely correct match over user's input. I do believe Microsoft has all the code available for good training, it's not only about Azure, Windows and Office, there is tons more and it's open source already.