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Then we get to the Code of Theseus argument, if you take a piece of code and replace every piece of with code that looks the same, is it still the original code

Then we get to the Code of Theseus argument, if you take a piece of code and replace every piece of with code that looks the same, is it still the original code? Is an AI reimplementation a "clean room" implementation? What if the AI only generates pseudocode and a human implements the final code based on that? Etc etc ad infinitum. Lawyers will be having fun with this philosophical question for a good decade.

HarHarVeryFunny 7mo ago
> Is an AI re-implementation a "clean room" implementation Certainly not if it had seen the code (incl. having been trained on it). The idea of clean room (dating back to IBM PC BIOS clones) is that ideas can't be copyright, but the expression of an idea (code) can be, so you have one person (or AI) write a spec of the thing you want to copy (expression -> idea) and then have another (in the "clean room") who has never seen the original code, and only seen the spec/idea, re-implement it. If the re-implementation was being done with AI, then for this to pass as "clean room" it would need to be proved that the AI had never seen the code, only the spec.
- theshrike79 7mo ago
  But isn't it similarly impossible to prove that the AI used an exact copy from a specific project that didn't have a permissive license? I get it that lifting a full-ass function as-is from a project is bad, but if you construct a function that does the same thing by aggregating bits from different projects - what then? There HAS to be moral and legal issues there, but what and where? Stealing other people's code is bad, but we do also have to admit that the vast majority of code in the world isn't doing anything groundbreaking that deserves a copyright. Or is it illegal to write a Hello World application after the first ever in that language was written and published, doesn't the copyright for that code exist on the first creator - and everyone else is in breach of their copyright or has to prove they had no prior knowledge of the code? (You can replace "hello world" with any trivial piece of code everyone writes a zillion times routinely). This whole thing is so wishy-washy and vague it's giving me migraines. I don't WANT to break any laws, but holy crap it's not easy to figure out where the actual limits are.

HarHarVeryFunny 7mo ago

> Is an AI re-implementation a "clean room" implementation Certainly not if it had seen the code (incl. having been trained on it). The idea of clean room (dating back to IBM PC BIOS clones) is that ideas can't be copyright, but the expression of an idea (code) can be, so you have one person (or AI) write a spec of the thing you want to copy (expression -> idea) and then have another (in the "clean room") who has never seen the original code, and only seen the spec/idea, re-implement it. If the re-implementation was being done with AI, then for this to pass as "clean room" it would need to be proved that the AI had never seen the code, only the spec.

theshrike79 7mo ago
But isn't it similarly impossible to prove that the AI used an exact copy from a specific project that didn't have a permissive license? I get it that lifting a full-ass function as-is from a project is bad, but if you construct a function that does the same thing by aggregating bits from different projects - what then? There HAS to be moral and legal issues there, but what and where? Stealing other people's code is bad, but we do also have to admit that the vast majority of code in the world isn't doing anything groundbreaking that deserves a copyright. Or is it illegal to write a Hello World application after the first ever in that language was written and published, doesn't the copyright for that code exist on the first creator - and everyone else is in breach of their copyright or has to prove they had no prior knowledge of the code? (You can replace "hello world" with any trivial piece of code everyone writes a zillion times routinely). This whole thing is so wishy-washy and vague it's giving me migraines. I don't WANT to break any laws, but holy crap it's not easy to figure out where the actual limits are.