Comment by norir

Comment by norir a day ago

17 replies

> I'm a programmer, and I use automatic programming. The code I generate in this way is mine. My code, my output, my production. I, and you, can be proud.

I disagree. The code you wrote is a collaboration with the model you used. To frame it this way, you are taking credit for the work the model did on your behalf. There is a difference between I wrote this code entirely by myself and I wrote the code with a partner. For me, it is analogous to the author of the score of an opera taking credit for the libretto because they gave the libretto author the rough narrative arc. If you didn't do it yourself, it isn't yours.

I generally prefer integrated works or at least ones that clearly acknowledge the collaboration and give proper credit.

iamsaitam 9 minutes ago

Or for another analogy, just substitute the LLM for an outsourced firm. Instead of hiring a firm to do the work, you're hiring a LLM.

catdog a day ago

Also it's not only the work of "the model" it's the work of human beings the model is trained on, often illegally.

  • sneak a day ago

    Copyright infringement is a tort. “Illegal” is almost always used to refer to breaking of criminal law.

    This seems like intentionally conflating them to imply that appropriating code for model training is a criminal offense, when, even in the most anti-AI, pro-IP view, it is plainly not.

    • topaz0 20 hours ago

      > “Illegal” is almost always used to refer to breaking of criminal law.

      This is false, at least in general usage. It is very common to hear about civil offenses being referred to as illegal behavior.

    • heavyset_go 21 hours ago
      • sneak 14 hours ago

        > There are four essential elements to a charge of criminal copyright infringement. In order to sustain a conviction under section 506(a), the government must demonstrate: (1) that a valid copyright; (2) was infringed by the defendant; (3) willfully; and (4) for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain.

        I think it’s very much an open debate if training a model on publicly available data counts as infringement or not.

        • heavyset_go 10 hours ago

          I'm replying to your comment about infringement being a civil tort versus a crime, it can be both.

kledru 12 hours ago

I was about to argue, and then I suddenly remembered some past situations where a project manager clearly considered the code I wrote to be his achievement and proudly accepted the company's thanks.

keyle a day ago

The line gets blurrier the more auto-complete you use.

Agentic programming is at the end of the day a higher level auto complete, with extremely fuzzy matching on English.

But when you write a block and you let copilot complete 3, 4, 5 statements. Are you really writing the code?

bitwize 20 hours ago

The way I put it is: AI assistance in programming is a service, not a tool. It's like you're commissioning the code to be written by an outside shop. A lot of companies do this with human programmers, but when you commission OpenAI or Anthropic, the code they provide was written by machine.

sneak a day ago

Prompting the AI is indeed “do[ing] it yourself”. There’s nobody else here, and this code is original and never existed before, and would not exist here and now if I hadn’t prompted this machine.

  • Thanemate a day ago

    Sure. But the sentence "I am a programmer" doesn't fit with prompting, just as much as me prompting for a drawing that resembles something doesn't make me a painter.

    • FeteCommuniste 21 hours ago

      Exactly. He's acting as something closer to a technical manager (who can dip into the code if need be but mostly doesn't) than a programmer.

    • helloplanets 21 hours ago

      So, what's your take on Andy Warhol, or sampling in music?

Craighead a day ago

How many JavaScript libraries does the average fortune 1000 developer invoke when programming?

  • wernsey 19 hours ago

    That average fortune 1000 developer is still expected to abide by the licensing terms of those libraries.

    And in practice, tools like NPM makes sure to output all of the libraries' licenses.