6 ms·

AI only got big, especially for coding, because they were able to train on a massive corpus of open source code. I don't think it is a coincidence.

hardwaresofton 1y ago
Another funny possibly sad coincidence is that the licenses that made open source what it is will probably be absolutely useless going forward, because as recent precedent has shown, companies can train on what they have legally gained access to. On the other hand, AGPL continues to be the future of F/OSS.
- haiku2077 1y ago
  MIT is also still useful; it lets me release code where I don't really care what other people do with it as long as they don't sue me (an actual possibility in some countries)
  - LtWorf 1y ago
    Which countries would these be?
    - haiku2077 1y ago
      The US, for one. You can sue nearly anyone for nearly anything, even something you obviously won't win in court, as long as you find a lawyer willing to do it; you don't need any actual legal standing to waste the target's time and money. Even the most unscrupulous lawyer is going to look at the MIT license, realize the target can defend it for a trivial amount of money (a single form letter from their lawyer) and move on.
      - Jensson 1y ago
        You can sue for damages if they have malware in the code, there is no license that protects you from distributing harmful products even if you do it for free.
        haiku2077 1y ago
        If I commit fraud, sure. But the code I release is extremely honest about what it does :)
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - thih9 1y ago
        There are other ways to litigate that the malicious/greedy can use, where MIT offers no protection; e.g. patent trolling.
- jorvi 1y ago
  Yup. The book torrenting case is pretty nuts. If I can reproduce the entirety of most books off the top of my head and sell that to people as a service, it's a copyright violation. If AI does it, it's fair use. Pants-on-head idiotic judge.
  - hardwaresofton 1y ago
    This was immediately my reaction as well, but I'm not a judge so what do I know. In my own mind I mark it as a "spice must flow" moment -- it will seem inevitable in retrospect but my simple (almost surely incorrect) take is that there just wasn't a way this was going to stop AI's progress. AI as a trend has incredible plot armor at this point in time. Is the hinge that the tools can recall a huge portion (not perfectly of course) but usually don't? What seems even more straight forward is the substitute good idea, it seems reasonable to assume people will buy less copies of book X when they start generating books heavily inspired by book X. But, this is probably just a case of a layman wandering into a complex topic, maybe it's the case that AI has just nestled into the absolute perfect spot in current copyright law, just like other things that seem like they should be illegal now but aren't.
  - fragmede 1y ago
    I didn't see the part of the trial where they got the "entirety of most books" out of Llama. What did you see that I didn't?
  - derektank 1y ago
    >If I can reproduce the entirety of most books off the top of my head and sell that to people as a service, it's a copyright violation. If AI does it, it's fair use. Assuming you're referring to Bartz v. Anthropic, that is explicitly not what the ruling said, in fact it's almost the inverse. The judge said that output from an AI model which is a straight up reproduction of copyrighted material would likely be an explicit violation of copyright. This is on page 12/32 of the judgement[1]. But the vast majority of output from an LLM like Claude is not a word for word reproduction; it's a transformative use of the original work. In fact, the authors bringing the suit didn't even claim that it had reproduced their work. From page 7, "Authors do not allege that any infringing copy of their works was or would ever be provided to users by the Claude service." That's because Anthropic is already explicitly filtering out results that might contain copyrighted material. (I've run into this myself while trying to translate foreign language song lyrics to English. Claude will simply refuse to do this)[2] [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058235/231/bartz-v-anthropic-pbc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058235/231/bartz-v-an... [2] https://claude.ai/share/d0586248-8d00-4d50-8e45-f9c5ef09ec81 https://claude.ai/share/d0586248-8d00-4d50-8e45-f9c5ef09ec81
- surfingdino 1y ago
  And if they AI companies don't like the license, they will ignore it or pay to be given a waver. Long may they rot in hell for doing that.
  - smokel 1y ago
    The people running AI companies have figured out that there is no such thing as hell. We have to come up with new reasons for people to behave in a friendly way.
    - _heimdall 1y ago
      The people running AI companies aren't magic, they can't be certain about what comes after death.
    - fennecbutt 1y ago
      We already have such reasons. Besides, all religious "kindness" was never kindness without strings attached, even though they'd like you to think that was the case.
  - yard2010 1y ago
    Hell is, by design, a consequence for poor people. (People could literally pay the church to not go to hell[0]). Rich people have no consequences whatsoever, let alone poor people consequences. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/preaching-the-crusades/friars-and-the-redemption-of-crusade-vows/E99937168054BCDA711FCE823633EAEC https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/preaching-the-crusa...
    - GTP 1y ago
      Not "by design", as historically the hell came first. It was only much later that they catholic church started talking about the purgatory and the possibility of reducing your punishment by paying money.
- malfist 1y ago
  Legally or illegally gained access too. Lest we forget Meta pirating books
  - coffeefirst 1y ago
    And the legality of this may vary by jurisdiction. There’s a nonzero chance that they pay a few million in the US for stealing books but the EU or Canada decide the training itself was illegal.
    - andy99 1y ago
      Then the EU and canada just won't have any sovereign LLMs. They'll have to decide if they'd rather prop up some artificial monopoly or support (by not actively undermining) innovation.
    - foobiekr 1y ago
      It’s not going to happen. The EU is desperate to stop being in fourth place in technology and will do absolutely nothing to put a damper on this. It’s their only hope to get out of the rut.
- EGreg 1y ago
  Explain how AGPL would prevent AI from being trained on it or AI-generated code competing with it. I have used AGPL for a decade and still not sure.
  - hardwaresofton 1y ago
    It wouldn't -- AGPL code that is picked up would also just get "fair used" into new software. That said, AGPL as a trend was a huge closing of the spigot of free F/OSS code for companies to use and not contribute back to.
    - EGreg 1y ago
      Yes, I hope it was a trend. People were judging me when I first started using it over 10 years ago.
- tom_m 1y ago
  And illegally too. Anthropic didn't pay for those books they used. It's too late at this point. The damage is done. These companies trained on illegally obtained data and they will never be held accountable for that. The training is done and they got what they needed. So even if they can't train on it in the future, it doesn't matter. They already have those base models.
  - ddq 1y ago
    Then punitive measures are in order. Add it to the pile of illegal, immoral, and unethical behavior of the feudal tech oligarchs already long overdue for justice. The harm they have done and are doing to humanity should not remain unpunished.
- sneak 1y ago
  The AGPL is a nonfree license that is virtually impossible to comply with. It’s an EULA trying to pretend it’s a license. You can’t have it both ways.
  - hardwaresofton 1y ago
    This is a strong claim, given it is listed as a free, copyleft license: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html Could you expand on why you think it's nonfree? Also, it's not that hard to comply with either...
    - px43 1y ago
      For some people "free" means "autonomy", and copyleft licences do a lot to restrict autonomy.
      - hardwaresofton 1y ago
        Yeah if it's a problem of definition, then I definitely agree that it could not match there, it certainly isn't a do anything you want license.
      - waffletower 1y ago
        "Free" decidedly means autonomy; "I have been freed from prison". Use of the word "free" in many OSS licenses is a jarring euphemism.
        tedheath123 1y ago
        cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty
      - jrochkind1 1y ago
        So interestingly, free meant autonomy for Stallman and the original proponents of "copyleft" style licenses too. But autonomy for end-users, not developers. But Stallman et al believed the copyleft style licenses maximized autonomy for end-users, rightly or wrongly, that was the intent.
- pizzafeelsright 1y ago
  If I can have AI retype all code per my desire how exactly is source code special? I like open source. I also don't think that is where the magic is anymore. It was scale for 20 years. Now it is speed.
bravesoul2 1y ago
Open source may be necessary but it is not sufficient. You also needed the compute power and architecture discoveries and the realisation that lots of data > clever feature mapping for this kind of work. A world without open source may have given birth to 2020s AI but probably at a slower pace.

hardwaresofton 1y ago

Another funny possibly sad coincidence is that the licenses that made open source what it is will probably be absolutely useless going forward, because as recent precedent has shown, companies can train on what they have legally gained access to. On the other hand, AGPL continues to be the future of F/OSS.

haiku2077 1y ago
MIT is also still useful; it lets me release code where I don't really care what other people do with it as long as they don't sue me (an actual possibility in some countries)
- LtWorf 1y ago
  Which countries would these be?
  - haiku2077 1y ago
    The US, for one. You can sue nearly anyone for nearly anything, even something you obviously won't win in court, as long as you find a lawyer willing to do it; you don't need any actual legal standing to waste the target's time and money. Even the most unscrupulous lawyer is going to look at the MIT license, realize the target can defend it for a trivial amount of money (a single form letter from their lawyer) and move on.
    - Jensson 1y ago
      You can sue for damages if they have malware in the code, there is no license that protects you from distributing harmful products even if you do it for free.
      - haiku2077 1y ago
        If I commit fraud, sure. But the code I release is extremely honest about what it does :)
        deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - thih9 1y ago
      There are other ways to litigate that the malicious/greedy can use, where MIT offers no protection; e.g. patent trolling.
jorvi 1y ago
Yup. The book torrenting case is pretty nuts. If I can reproduce the entirety of most books off the top of my head and sell that to people as a service, it's a copyright violation. If AI does it, it's fair use. Pants-on-head idiotic judge.
- hardwaresofton 1y ago
  This was immediately my reaction as well, but I'm not a judge so what do I know. In my own mind I mark it as a "spice must flow" moment -- it will seem inevitable in retrospect but my simple (almost surely incorrect) take is that there just wasn't a way this was going to stop AI's progress. AI as a trend has incredible plot armor at this point in time. Is the hinge that the tools can recall a huge portion (not perfectly of course) but usually don't? What seems even more straight forward is the substitute good idea, it seems reasonable to assume people will buy less copies of book X when they start generating books heavily inspired by book X. But, this is probably just a case of a layman wandering into a complex topic, maybe it's the case that AI has just nestled into the absolute perfect spot in current copyright law, just like other things that seem like they should be illegal now but aren't.
- fragmede 1y ago
  I didn't see the part of the trial where they got the "entirety of most books" out of Llama. What did you see that I didn't?
- derektank 1y ago
  >If I can reproduce the entirety of most books off the top of my head and sell that to people as a service, it's a copyright violation. If AI does it, it's fair use. Assuming you're referring to Bartz v. Anthropic, that is explicitly not what the ruling said, in fact it's almost the inverse. The judge said that output from an AI model which is a straight up reproduction of copyrighted material would likely be an explicit violation of copyright. This is on page 12/32 of the judgement[1]. But the vast majority of output from an LLM like Claude is not a word for word reproduction; it's a transformative use of the original work. In fact, the authors bringing the suit didn't even claim that it had reproduced their work. From page 7, "Authors do not allege that any infringing copy of their works was or would ever be provided to users by the Claude service." That's because Anthropic is already explicitly filtering out results that might contain copyrighted material. (I've run into this myself while trying to translate foreign language song lyrics to English. Claude will simply refuse to do this)[2] [1] https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058235/231/bartz-v-anthropic-pbc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69058235/231/bartz-v-an... [2] https://claude.ai/share/d0586248-8d00-4d50-8e45-f9c5ef09ec81 https://claude.ai/share/d0586248-8d00-4d50-8e45-f9c5ef09ec81
surfingdino 1y ago
And if they AI companies don't like the license, they will ignore it or pay to be given a waver. Long may they rot in hell for doing that.
- smokel 1y ago
  The people running AI companies have figured out that there is no such thing as hell. We have to come up with new reasons for people to behave in a friendly way.
  - _heimdall 1y ago
    The people running AI companies aren't magic, they can't be certain about what comes after death.
  - fennecbutt 1y ago
    We already have such reasons. Besides, all religious "kindness" was never kindness without strings attached, even though they'd like you to think that was the case.
- yard2010 1y ago
  Hell is, by design, a consequence for poor people. (People could literally pay the church to not go to hell[0]). Rich people have no consequences whatsoever, let alone poor people consequences. [0] https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/preaching-the-crusades/friars-and-the-redemption-of-crusade-vows/E99937168054BCDA711FCE823633EAEC https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/abs/preaching-the-crusa...
  - GTP 1y ago
    Not "by design", as historically the hell came first. It was only much later that they catholic church started talking about the purgatory and the possibility of reducing your punishment by paying money.
malfist 1y ago
Legally or illegally gained access too. Lest we forget Meta pirating books
- coffeefirst 1y ago
  And the legality of this may vary by jurisdiction. There’s a nonzero chance that they pay a few million in the US for stealing books but the EU or Canada decide the training itself was illegal.
  - andy99 1y ago
    Then the EU and canada just won't have any sovereign LLMs. They'll have to decide if they'd rather prop up some artificial monopoly or support (by not actively undermining) innovation.
  - foobiekr 1y ago
    It’s not going to happen. The EU is desperate to stop being in fourth place in technology and will do absolutely nothing to put a damper on this. It’s their only hope to get out of the rut.
EGreg 1y ago
Explain how AGPL would prevent AI from being trained on it or AI-generated code competing with it. I have used AGPL for a decade and still not sure.
- hardwaresofton 1y ago
  It wouldn't -- AGPL code that is picked up would also just get "fair used" into new software. That said, AGPL as a trend was a huge closing of the spigot of free F/OSS code for companies to use and not contribute back to.
  - EGreg 1y ago
    Yes, I hope it was a trend. People were judging me when I first started using it over 10 years ago.
tom_m 1y ago
And illegally too. Anthropic didn't pay for those books they used. It's too late at this point. The damage is done. These companies trained on illegally obtained data and they will never be held accountable for that. The training is done and they got what they needed. So even if they can't train on it in the future, it doesn't matter. They already have those base models.
- ddq 1y ago
  Then punitive measures are in order. Add it to the pile of illegal, immoral, and unethical behavior of the feudal tech oligarchs already long overdue for justice. The harm they have done and are doing to humanity should not remain unpunished.
sneak 1y ago
The AGPL is a nonfree license that is virtually impossible to comply with. It’s an EULA trying to pretend it’s a license. You can’t have it both ways.
- hardwaresofton 1y ago
  This is a strong claim, given it is listed as a free, copyleft license: https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html https://www.gnu.org/licenses/agpl-3.0.en.html Could you expand on why you think it's nonfree? Also, it's not that hard to comply with either...
  - px43 1y ago
    For some people "free" means "autonomy", and copyleft licences do a lot to restrict autonomy.
    - hardwaresofton 1y ago
      Yeah if it's a problem of definition, then I definitely agree that it could not match there, it certainly isn't a do anything you want license.
    - waffletower 1y ago
      "Free" decidedly means autonomy; "I have been freed from prison". Use of the word "free" in many OSS licenses is a jarring euphemism.
      - tedheath123 1y ago
        cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Concepts_of_Liberty
    - jrochkind1 1y ago
      So interestingly, free meant autonomy for Stallman and the original proponents of "copyleft" style licenses too. But autonomy for end-users, not developers. But Stallman et al believed the copyleft style licenses maximized autonomy for end-users, rightly or wrongly, that was the intent.
pizzafeelsright 1y ago
If I can have AI retype all code per my desire how exactly is source code special? I like open source. I also don't think that is where the magic is anymore. It was scale for 20 years. Now it is speed.

bravesoul2 1y ago

Open source may be necessary but it is not sufficient. You also needed the compute power and architecture discoveries and the realisation that lots of data > clever feature mapping for this kind of work. A world without open source may have given birth to 2020s AI but probably at a slower pace.