4 ms·

Copilot does small-ish snippets. It does not recreate a whole project. I am on the fence about the morality, but it won't recreate elastic search for Amazon to

Copilot does small-ish snippets. It does not recreate a whole project. I am on the fence about the morality, but it won't recreate elastic search for Amazon to resell as a service.

berkes 3y ago
I find It fascinating to see the same-ish group of people arguing that "Algorithms cannot be patented" or "information wants to be free" or "free software, free access" and such, now turning 180° and demanding to control where, how and when information is used. At the very least it's somewhat ironic. At worst it's plain hypocrite.
- palata 3y ago
  It feels like you completely miss the point of copyleft licenses. They definitely do impose constraints. Saying "I believe that LLMs are abusing my license" is absolutely not hypocritical.
  - jpambrun 3y ago
    If I read your code, learn from it and later write something inspired and based on the knowledge I internalized, am I violating your license?
    - palata 3y ago
      I keep reading this argument, and it's hard for me to grasp how people think it makes sense. Why do people keep comparing an LLM to a human? If I copy-paste your code, can I say that my computer "read your code, learned from it and later wrote something inspired and based on the knowledge it internalized"? If I take a photography of a photography, can I sell it as mine, given that my camera "observed the original and learned from it"? My opinion is that if you read my code, learn from it and later write something inspired and based on the knowledge you internalized, then that is fine. Because you are a human. But if you do anything that it functionally an obfuscated copy-paste and pretend that you actually created that, then that is not fine.
      - jpambrun 3y ago
        Likewise, it is hard for me to understand how people think your argument makes sense.. I work in ML, although not LLM, and I do understand how they work. I don't think you can reduce LLMs to obfuscating copy-pasters. I believe they are closer to our internalizing process and they can come up with novel solutions to never seen before problems.
        palata 3y ago
        > Likewise, it is hard for me to understand how people think your argument makes sense.. My argument is "LLMs are not humans, therefore we should be careful with such comparisons". Do you also think that LLMs should have rights? Should it be illegal to make an LLM work 24h a day? > I work in ML, although not LLM, and I do understand how they work. I never meant to underestimate ML. However it feels like you underestimate humans :-). > I don't think you can reduce LLMs to obfuscating copy-pasters. I believe they are closer to our internalizing process Wow. If you think that LLMs are closer to humans than to copy-pasters... you must not think much of living organisms. Now I understand why ML people think that AGI is coming soon :).
  - berkes 3y ago
    I'm not saying that saying that critique on LLMS who are abusing copyleft licences is hypocritical. I'm saying that the arguments that define this "abuse" often are. What I specifically find hypocritical, we cannot suddenly put restrictions on what clients may or may not access, read, store and see our content. "Only a human may access my content" is just as bad as these numerous attempts of DRM that "hollywood" has tried to force down on the web. More practically: I have a blog, with a CC-SA licence on my content. If an LLM starts spewing my exact paragraphs and articles without the same license (the SA-part asks this), I'd be pissed and have a right to call it "abuse" and could quite easily take the company behind it to court (If I wanted to). But when that LLM merely hashes, vectorifies, trains on, and stores copies of my content so that their project can mimic my tone of voice, ideas and other content, so be it: I find it immoral to impose restrictions on what, who, where and how my content is read. Because I find DRM and such immoral.
    - palata 3y ago
      > But when that LLM merely [...] What if I copy your article by hand? Or run it through an algorithm that translates it into another language. Can I sell it as my own? Or does it have to go through an LLM for people to sell your work as theirs? Think about this: what if your job was to write articles, and suddenly nobody buys them anymore because they can read them cheaper on another website that serves them after the LLM laundering? Is it moral for that other website to make money out of your work? > I find it immoral to impose restrictions on what, who, where and how my content is read. Did you think that through? Do you find it immoral for a book author to sell their book, and to make it illegal for you to sell copies of it? It feels like you only consider your hobby-blog and ignore those who try to make a living by producing content (e.g. a photographer).
      - berkes 3y ago
        You see an LLM as something that copies stuff. I don't. A judge will have to decide which it is. So far, they're leaning to "it's not a copy machine" Edit: and yes. I find it immoral when an author has a say in how I use the book after buying it. Whether I whipe my ass with the paper, or display it in a shrine is non of his business. I bought the carrier, it is mine. And under copyright law (EU), I'm free to sell my copy to a second hand bookstore, and that bookstore is free to sell it and make a profit. I understand the nuances of digital carries that can duplicate their contained knowledge much easier than a paper book can, but I find it immoral that the ebook I buy, cannot be read by my wife on her ereader without her buying it as well.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
  In the interest of best possible interpretation of the group argument; Group A : "Information wants to be free and we shouldn't patent algorithms" Group B : "If you want to use our corporate stuff, you must pay" Group A : "If that is the route you choose, we will still not charge for our stuff but if you want to use it, you must share your changes" Group B : "If we use this tool that generates code, trained on the code that Group A created, it doesn't count as Group A's code and we can ignore their rules" Group A : "It does count as our code, please abide by the rules." More interesting to me would be; If I trained a LLM on leaked MS sources and built an OS or Office suite. Would MS be ok with that?
  - jpambrun 3y ago
    The rules remains the same. If you reuse a significant amount of code as is, you are infringe copyright. If you internalized some new knowledge based on some code and come up with a new implementation.. this is how we human learn. This is expected. Why would it be different for llm?
    - themaninthedark 3y ago
      And that is what this breaks down to, is a LLM learning? or is it just regurgitating? From my limited knowledge, it looks like it is just regurgitating. This is based on what I have heard about outputs, i.e. stays the same if rand function is fixed. Also with code there are finite ways to create something functional as opposed to an opinion paper where there are a range of viewpoints and how to express those viewpoints.
      - jpambrun 3y ago
        "And that is what this breaks down to, is a LLM learning? or is it just regurgitating?" You can make this argument for any artist. We study whole art movements which are periods of time where all art looks the same. Somehow, we want code production to be completely novel with no prior inspiration? To your second point. I agree. There is limited expressivity in code implementation. As a human how would you cope with that? You can't recall any prior code you may have seen and you must write completely different code than anything in existence or face copyright litigation?

Copilot does small-ish snippets. It does not recreate a whole project. I am on the fence about the morality, but it won't recreate elastic search for Amazon to resell as a service.

berkes 3y ago

I find It fascinating to see the same-ish group of people arguing that "Algorithms cannot be patented" or "information wants to be free" or "free software, free access" and such, now turning 180° and demanding to control where, how and when information is used. At the very least it's somewhat ironic. At worst it's plain hypocrite.

palata 3y ago
It feels like you completely miss the point of copyleft licenses. They definitely do impose constraints. Saying "I believe that LLMs are abusing my license" is absolutely not hypocritical.
- jpambrun 3y ago
  If I read your code, learn from it and later write something inspired and based on the knowledge I internalized, am I violating your license?
  - palata 3y ago
    I keep reading this argument, and it's hard for me to grasp how people think it makes sense. Why do people keep comparing an LLM to a human? If I copy-paste your code, can I say that my computer "read your code, learned from it and later wrote something inspired and based on the knowledge it internalized"? If I take a photography of a photography, can I sell it as mine, given that my camera "observed the original and learned from it"? My opinion is that if you read my code, learn from it and later write something inspired and based on the knowledge you internalized, then that is fine. Because you are a human. But if you do anything that it functionally an obfuscated copy-paste and pretend that you actually created that, then that is not fine.
    - jpambrun 3y ago
      Likewise, it is hard for me to understand how people think your argument makes sense.. I work in ML, although not LLM, and I do understand how they work. I don't think you can reduce LLMs to obfuscating copy-pasters. I believe they are closer to our internalizing process and they can come up with novel solutions to never seen before problems.
      - palata 3y ago
        > Likewise, it is hard for me to understand how people think your argument makes sense.. My argument is "LLMs are not humans, therefore we should be careful with such comparisons". Do you also think that LLMs should have rights? Should it be illegal to make an LLM work 24h a day? > I work in ML, although not LLM, and I do understand how they work. I never meant to underestimate ML. However it feels like you underestimate humans :-). > I don't think you can reduce LLMs to obfuscating copy-pasters. I believe they are closer to our internalizing process Wow. If you think that LLMs are closer to humans than to copy-pasters... you must not think much of living organisms. Now I understand why ML people think that AGI is coming soon :).
- berkes 3y ago
  I'm not saying that saying that critique on LLMS who are abusing copyleft licences is hypocritical. I'm saying that the arguments that define this "abuse" often are. What I specifically find hypocritical, we cannot suddenly put restrictions on what clients may or may not access, read, store and see our content. "Only a human may access my content" is just as bad as these numerous attempts of DRM that "hollywood" has tried to force down on the web. More practically: I have a blog, with a CC-SA licence on my content. If an LLM starts spewing my exact paragraphs and articles without the same license (the SA-part asks this), I'd be pissed and have a right to call it "abuse" and could quite easily take the company behind it to court (If I wanted to). But when that LLM merely hashes, vectorifies, trains on, and stores copies of my content so that their project can mimic my tone of voice, ideas and other content, so be it: I find it immoral to impose restrictions on what, who, where and how my content is read. Because I find DRM and such immoral.
  - palata 3y ago
    > But when that LLM merely [...] What if I copy your article by hand? Or run it through an algorithm that translates it into another language. Can I sell it as my own? Or does it have to go through an LLM for people to sell your work as theirs? Think about this: what if your job was to write articles, and suddenly nobody buys them anymore because they can read them cheaper on another website that serves them after the LLM laundering? Is it moral for that other website to make money out of your work? > I find it immoral to impose restrictions on what, who, where and how my content is read. Did you think that through? Do you find it immoral for a book author to sell their book, and to make it illegal for you to sell copies of it? It feels like you only consider your hobby-blog and ignore those who try to make a living by producing content (e.g. a photographer).
    - berkes 3y ago
      You see an LLM as something that copies stuff. I don't. A judge will have to decide which it is. So far, they're leaning to "it's not a copy machine" Edit: and yes. I find it immoral when an author has a say in how I use the book after buying it. Whether I whipe my ass with the paper, or display it in a shrine is non of his business. I bought the carrier, it is mine. And under copyright law (EU), I'm free to sell my copy to a second hand bookstore, and that bookstore is free to sell it and make a profit. I understand the nuances of digital carries that can duplicate their contained knowledge much easier than a paper book can, but I find it immoral that the ebook I buy, cannot be read by my wife on her ereader without her buying it as well.
themaninthedark 3y ago
In the interest of best possible interpretation of the group argument; Group A : "Information wants to be free and we shouldn't patent algorithms" Group B : "If you want to use our corporate stuff, you must pay" Group A : "If that is the route you choose, we will still not charge for our stuff but if you want to use it, you must share your changes" Group B : "If we use this tool that generates code, trained on the code that Group A created, it doesn't count as Group A's code and we can ignore their rules" Group A : "It does count as our code, please abide by the rules." More interesting to me would be; If I trained a LLM on leaked MS sources and built an OS or Office suite. Would MS be ok with that?
- jpambrun 3y ago
  The rules remains the same. If you reuse a significant amount of code as is, you are infringe copyright. If you internalized some new knowledge based on some code and come up with a new implementation.. this is how we human learn. This is expected. Why would it be different for llm?
  - themaninthedark 3y ago
    And that is what this breaks down to, is a LLM learning? or is it just regurgitating? From my limited knowledge, it looks like it is just regurgitating. This is based on what I have heard about outputs, i.e. stays the same if rand function is fixed. Also with code there are finite ways to create something functional as opposed to an opinion paper where there are a range of viewpoints and how to express those viewpoints.
    - jpambrun 3y ago
      "And that is what this breaks down to, is a LLM learning? or is it just regurgitating?" You can make this argument for any artist. We study whole art movements which are periods of time where all art looks the same. Somehow, we want code production to be completely novel with no prior inspiration? To your second point. I agree. There is limited expressivity in code implementation. As a human how would you cope with that? You can't recall any prior code you may have seen and you must write completely different code than anything in existence or face copyright litigation?