exact same problem exists with GPT3 and others.
big tech slashing and burning, ruthlessly exploiting the least empowered people in the tech economy.
neat hack.
The prospect of knowledge work being resold in this way feels icky. Perhaps I'd feel different if there was a simple, well-defined way to opt out of contributing to the training corpus. Opt-in would be even better.
Being able to ask a model for help writing Spark, SQLAlchemy, Tokio, whatever, actually increases the usability of free code vs proprietary code.
If an AI being inspired by GPL code that happened to be in its training data because someone other than the creator stuck it in a repo on GitHub is just fine, and if some code produced as a result is practically identical that is fine too, and the resulting code is not considered GPL any more, then the GPL and licences like it are worthless.
The only two designations that mean anything at that point are public domain and commercial. “free” as in “Free” rather than public domain means the same as public domain.
So there is no point releasing free (other than public domain) code, discouraging the act. If I want to control how my code is used at all protected commercial release becomes the only option.
This of course suits the commercial interest behind copilot just fine and dandy…
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But, if commercial code ended up in the training set the same should apply because in terms of giving the right to use code licences like the GPL and commercial licences are no different: the licence gives the right to use the code. If passing it through an AI gives that right, bypassing the licence, for one case than it should for the other too. I wonder if MS would be happy for copilot's own code to be in the training set and for me to produce and sell something based on the output of an AI trained with their code?!
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I think the AI systems like copilot should be considered the same as us wet-ware naturally formed intelligence systems in that respect: if it produces something based on code under a particular licence then that something should be subject to the terms of the licence. Ignorance of the licence is no excuse. If the AI can not be made aware of the correct licence and attribution for the code, so it can include that with its suggestions based on it, then that code should not be in the training set.
For decades MS complained about open source code potentially creating this very situation, just with only non-artificial intelligences in the mix, now they are hoping no one can call them on that because it is convenient for them to ignore the issue.
I find most things in all code to be generic and obvious. The same functions are used by lots of other software with just different names that there's nothing novel.
After you've learned to classify lots of functions with big O notation, you will end up writing things in an obvious way for a base-level optimization that fits naturally.