7 ms·

There is also IP taint when using "AI". We're just pretending that there's not. If someone came to you and said "good news: I memorized the code of all the op

by neilv 1y ago

There is also IP taint when using "AI". We're just pretending that there's not. If someone came to you and said "good news: I memorized the code of all the open source projects in this space, and can regurgitate it on command", you would be smart to ban them from working on code at your company. But with "AI", we make up a bunch of rationalizations. ("I'm doing AI agentic generative AI workflow boilerplate 10x gettin it done AI did I say AI yet!") And we pretend the person never said that they're just loosely laundering GPL and other code in a way that rightly would be existentially toxic to an IP-based company.

luma 1y ago
Also ban StackOverflow and nearly any text book in the field. The reality is that programmers are going to see other programmers code.
- neilv 1y ago
  Huge difference, and companies recognized the difference, right up until "AI" hype.
- timeon 1y ago
  How is that same thing?
- JoshTriplett 1y ago
  "see" and "copy" are two different things. It's fine to look at StackOverflow to understand the solution to a problem. It's not fine to copy and paste from StackOverflow and ignore its license or attribution. Content on StackOverflow is under CC-by-sa, version depends on the date it was submitted: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing . (It's really unfortunate that they didn't pick license compatible with code; at one point they started to move to the MIT license for code, but then didn't follow through on it.)
  - wizzwizz4 1y ago
    CC BY-SA 4.0 is "compatible with code". It is, for example, GPL-compatible (see https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibility:_GPLv3 https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibili...). It's just not designed for code.
    - JoshTriplett 1y ago
      That's a fair distinction. For the specific case of CC-by-sa 4.0, it's possible to convert to GPLv3. That doesn't help with prior versions of CC-by-sa. So, for the specific case of material contributed to StackOverflow on or after 2018-05-02, it's possible to use it under GPLv3 (including appropriate attribution), so any project compatible with GPLv3 can copy it with attribution. Any material before that point is not safe to copy.
      - wizzwizz4 1y ago
        It does help with prior versions, since you can use CC BY-SA 3.0 material under CC BY-SA 4.0, which is GPLv3-compatible. (See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/337742/308065 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/337742/308065.) It doesn't necessarily help with future versions.
        JoshTriplett 1y ago
        I stand corrected, thank you! I forgot that CC-by-sa included an automatic upgrade clause, unlike many other licenses that require an explicit "or any later version" to do that.
- Hamuko 1y ago
  There's a reason why clean-room reverse engineering exists and it's to ensure that you can't commit copyright infringement by knowing about the code you are trying to reimplement.
- nitwit005 1y ago
  > The reality is that programmers are going to see other programmers code. You're certainly correct. It's also true that companies are going to sue over it. There's no reason to make yourself an easy lawsuit target, if it's trivial to avoid it.
tick_tock_tick 1y ago
> There is also IP taint when using "AI". We're just pretending that there's not. I don't think anyone who's not monetarily incentivize to pretend there are IP/Copyright issues actually thinks there are. Luckily everyone is for the most part just ignoring them and the legal system is working well and not allowing them an inch to stop progress.
- neilv 1y ago
  > I don't think anyone who's not monetarily incentivize to pretend there are IP/Copyright issues actually thinks there are. Why do you think that about people who disagree with you? You're responding directly to someone who's said they think there's issues, and not pretending. Do you think they're lying? Did you not read what they said? And AFAICT a lot of other people think similarly to me. The perverse incentives to rationalize are on the side of the people looking to exploit the confusion, not the people who are saying "wait a minute, what you're actually doing is..." So a gold rush person claiming opponents must be pretending because of incentives... seems like the category of "every accusation is a confession".
  - tick_tock_tick 1y ago
    No, I think they have a monetary incentive they have failed to disclose or a limited at best understanding of basic copyright law. They can have a moral view that AI is "stealing" but they are claiming there is actually a legal issue at play.
    - thombles 1y ago
      Putting aside the notion that a monetary incentive is invalid for some reason, there are also plenty of open source authors who are pretty unimpressed that they only ask for attribution and even that's being laundered away via weights. If their licence isn't being respected that's certainly a legal issue.
      - rerdavies 1y ago
ineedasername 1y ago
Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative. There’s lots of details to figure, but the genie is out of the bottle. Sure it’s a big hill to climb in rethinking IP laws to align with a societal desire that generating IP continue to be a viable economic work product, but that is what’s necessary.
- alfalfasprout 1y ago
  > Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative This is far from settled law. Let's not mischaracterize it. Even so, an AI regurgitating proprietary code that's licensed in some other way is a very real risk.
  - popalchemist 1y ago
    No more so than regurgitating an entire book. While it could technically be possible in the case of certain repos that are ubiquitous on the internet (and therefore overrepresented in training data to the point that they are "regurgitated" verbatim, in whole), it is extremely unlikely and would only occur after deliberate prompting. The NYT suit against Open AI shows (in discovery) that the NYT was only able to get partial results after deliberately prompting the model with portions of the text they were trying to force it to regurgitate. So. Yes, technically possible. But impossible by accident. Furthermore when you make this argument you reveal that you don't understand how these models work. They do not simply compress all the data they were trained on into a tiny storable version. They are effectively multiplication matrices that allow math to be done to predict the most likely next token (read: 2-3 Unicode characters) given some input. So the model does not "contain" code. It "contains" a way of doing calculations for predicting what text comes next. Finally, let's say that it is possible that the model does spit out not entire works, but a handful of lines of code that appear in some codebase. This does not constitute copyright infringement, as the lines in question a) represent a tiny portion of the whole work (and copyright only protecst against the reduplication of whole works or siginficant portions of the work), and B) there are a limited number of ways to accomplish a certain function and it is not only possible but inevitable that two devs working independently could arrive at the same implementation. Therefore using an identical implementation (which is what this case would be) of a part of a work is no more illegal than the use of a certain chord progression or melodic phrasing or drum rhythm. Courts have ruled about this thoroughly.
lgas 1y ago
> If someone came to you and said "good news: I memorized the code of all the open source projects in this space, and can regurgitate it on command", you would be smart to ban them from working on code at your company. If you find a human that did that send them my way, I'll hire them.
mhh__ 1y ago
That's not really how LLMs are used, unless we're planning on classing gitignores as IP LLMs are interesting because they can combine things they learn from multiple projects into a new language that doesn't feature in any of them, and pick up details from your request. Unless you're schizophrenic enough to insist that you never even see other code it's just not a realistic problem Honestly I've had big arguments about this IP stuff before and unless you actually have a lawyer specifically go after something or very obviously violate the GPL it's just a tactic for people to slow people they don't like down. People find a way to invent HR departments fractally.
watwut 1y ago
There is same pretensiom with "hallucinations". If I did the same, it would bs called lying or bullshitting.

by neilv 1y ago

luma 1y ago

Also ban StackOverflow and nearly any text book in the field. The reality is that programmers are going to see other programmers code.

neilv 1y ago
Huge difference, and companies recognized the difference, right up until "AI" hype.
timeon 1y ago
How is that same thing?
JoshTriplett 1y ago
"see" and "copy" are two different things. It's fine to look at StackOverflow to understand the solution to a problem. It's not fine to copy and paste from StackOverflow and ignore its license or attribution. Content on StackOverflow is under CC-by-sa, version depends on the date it was submitted: https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing https://stackoverflow.com/help/licensing . (It's really unfortunate that they didn't pick license compatible with code; at one point they started to move to the MIT license for code, but then didn't follow through on it.)
- wizzwizz4 1y ago
  CC BY-SA 4.0 is "compatible with code". It is, for example, GPL-compatible (see https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibility:_GPLv3 https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/ShareAlike_compatibili...). It's just not designed for code.
  - JoshTriplett 1y ago
    That's a fair distinction. For the specific case of CC-by-sa 4.0, it's possible to convert to GPLv3. That doesn't help with prior versions of CC-by-sa. So, for the specific case of material contributed to StackOverflow on or after 2018-05-02, it's possible to use it under GPLv3 (including appropriate attribution), so any project compatible with GPLv3 can copy it with attribution. Any material before that point is not safe to copy.
    - wizzwizz4 1y ago
      It does help with prior versions, since you can use CC BY-SA 3.0 material under CC BY-SA 4.0, which is GPLv3-compatible. (See https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/337742/308065 https://meta.stackexchange.com/a/337742/308065.) It doesn't necessarily help with future versions.
      - JoshTriplett 1y ago
        I stand corrected, thank you! I forgot that CC-by-sa included an automatic upgrade clause, unlike many other licenses that require an explicit "or any later version" to do that.
Hamuko 1y ago
There's a reason why clean-room reverse engineering exists and it's to ensure that you can't commit copyright infringement by knowing about the code you are trying to reimplement.
nitwit005 1y ago
> The reality is that programmers are going to see other programmers code. You're certainly correct. It's also true that companies are going to sue over it. There's no reason to make yourself an easy lawsuit target, if it's trivial to avoid it.

tick_tock_tick 1y ago

> There is also IP taint when using "AI". We're just pretending that there's not. I don't think anyone who's not monetarily incentivize to pretend there are IP/Copyright issues actually thinks there are. Luckily everyone is for the most part just ignoring them and the legal system is working well and not allowing them an inch to stop progress.

neilv 1y ago
> I don't think anyone who's not monetarily incentivize to pretend there are IP/Copyright issues actually thinks there are. Why do you think that about people who disagree with you? You're responding directly to someone who's said they think there's issues, and not pretending. Do you think they're lying? Did you not read what they said? And AFAICT a lot of other people think similarly to me. The perverse incentives to rationalize are on the side of the people looking to exploit the confusion, not the people who are saying "wait a minute, what you're actually doing is..." So a gold rush person claiming opponents must be pretending because of incentives... seems like the category of "every accusation is a confession".
- tick_tock_tick 1y ago
  No, I think they have a monetary incentive they have failed to disclose or a limited at best understanding of basic copyright law. They can have a moral view that AI is "stealing" but they are claiming there is actually a legal issue at play.
  - thombles 1y ago
    Putting aside the notion that a monetary incentive is invalid for some reason, there are also plenty of open source authors who are pretty unimpressed that they only ask for attribution and even that's being laundered away via weights. If their licence isn't being respected that's certainly a legal issue.
    - rerdavies 1y ago

ineedasername 1y ago

Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative. There’s lots of details to figure, but the genie is out of the bottle. Sure it’s a big hill to climb in rethinking IP laws to align with a societal desire that generating IP continue to be a viable economic work product, but that is what’s necessary.

alfalfasprout 1y ago
> Courts (at least in the US) have already ruled that use of ingested data for training is transformative This is far from settled law. Let's not mischaracterize it. Even so, an AI regurgitating proprietary code that's licensed in some other way is a very real risk.
- popalchemist 1y ago
  No more so than regurgitating an entire book. While it could technically be possible in the case of certain repos that are ubiquitous on the internet (and therefore overrepresented in training data to the point that they are "regurgitated" verbatim, in whole), it is extremely unlikely and would only occur after deliberate prompting. The NYT suit against Open AI shows (in discovery) that the NYT was only able to get partial results after deliberately prompting the model with portions of the text they were trying to force it to regurgitate. So. Yes, technically possible. But impossible by accident. Furthermore when you make this argument you reveal that you don't understand how these models work. They do not simply compress all the data they were trained on into a tiny storable version. They are effectively multiplication matrices that allow math to be done to predict the most likely next token (read: 2-3 Unicode characters) given some input. So the model does not "contain" code. It "contains" a way of doing calculations for predicting what text comes next. Finally, let's say that it is possible that the model does spit out not entire works, but a handful of lines of code that appear in some codebase. This does not constitute copyright infringement, as the lines in question a) represent a tiny portion of the whole work (and copyright only protecst against the reduplication of whole works or siginficant portions of the work), and B) there are a limited number of ways to accomplish a certain function and it is not only possible but inevitable that two devs working independently could arrive at the same implementation. Therefore using an identical implementation (which is what this case would be) of a part of a work is no more illegal than the use of a certain chord progression or melodic phrasing or drum rhythm. Courts have ruled about this thoroughly.

lgas 1y ago

> If someone came to you and said "good news: I memorized the code of all the open source projects in this space, and can regurgitate it on command", you would be smart to ban them from working on code at your company. If you find a human that did that send them my way, I'll hire them.

mhh__ 1y ago

That's not really how LLMs are used, unless we're planning on classing gitignores as IP LLMs are interesting because they can combine things they learn from multiple projects into a new language that doesn't feature in any of them, and pick up details from your request. Unless you're schizophrenic enough to insist that you never even see other code it's just not a realistic problem Honestly I've had big arguments about this IP stuff before and unless you actually have a lawyer specifically go after something or very obviously violate the GPL it's just a tactic for people to slow people they don't like down. People find a way to invent HR departments fractally.

watwut 1y ago

There is same pretensiom with "hallucinations". If I did the same, it would bs called lying or bullshitting.