“The AI Act will define how the world regulates AI and we need to get it right, for developers and the open-source community,” said Dohmke.

Dohmke was born and grew up in Germany but now lives in the US. As such, he is all too aware of the widespread belief that the EU cannot lead when it comes to tech innovation.

“As a European, I love seeing how open-source AI innovations are beginning to break the narrative that only the US and China can lead on tech innovation.”

“I’ll be honest, as a European living in the United States, this is a pervasive – and often true – narrative. But this can change. And it’s already beginning to, thanks to open-source developers.”

AI will revolutionise just about every aspect of our lives. Regulation is vital to minimise the risks associated with AI while allowing the benefits to flourish.

“Together, OSS (Open Source Software) developers will use AI to help make our lives better. I have no doubt that OSS developers will help build AI innovations that empower those with disabilities, help us solve climate change, and save lives.”

A risk of overregulation is that it drives innovation elsewhere. Startups are more likely to establish themselves in countries like the US and China where they’re likely not subject to as strict regulations. Europe will find itself falling behind and having less influence on the global stage when it comes to AI.

“The AI Act is so crucial. This policy could well set the precedent for how the world regulates AI. It is foundationally important. Important for European technological leadership, and the future of the European economy itself. The AI Act must be fair and balanced for the open-source community.

“Policymakers should help us get there. The AI Act can foster democratised innovation and solidify Europe’s leadership in open, values-based artificial intelligence. That is why I believe that open-source developers should be exempt from the AI Act.”

In expanding on his belief that open-source developers should be exempt, Dohmke explains that the compliance burden should fall on those shipping products.

“OSS developers are often volunteers. Many are working two jobs. They are scientists, doctors, academics, professors, and university students alike. They don’t usually stand to profit from their contributions—and they certainly don’t have big budgets and compliance departments!”

EU lawmakers are hoping to agree on draft AI rules next month with the aim of winning the acceptance of member states by the end of the year.

“Open-source is forming the foundation of AI innovation in Europe. The US and China don’t have to win it all. Let’s break that narrative apart!

“Let’s give the open-source community the daylight and the clarity to grow their ideas and build them for the rest of the world! And by doing so, let’s give Europe the chance to be a leader in this new age of AI.”

GitHub’s policy paper on the AI Act can be found here.

(Image Credit: Collision Conf under CC BY 2.0 license)

Relevant: US and EU agree to collaborate on improving lives with AI

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Using the feature, developers can “brush” over their code to see it update in real-time.

Several different brushes are included to achieve various aims. For example, one brush makes code more readable—especially important when coding as part of a team or contributing to open-source projects.

Here are the other included brushes:

• Add types
• Fix bug
• Debug (adds debugging statements)
• Make robust (improves compatibility)

Code Brushes also supports the creation of custom brushes. One example is a brush to make a form “more accessible” automatically.

“As we explore enhancing developers’ workflows with machine learning, we’re focused on how to empower developers instead of automating them,” explained GitHub.

“This was one of many explorations we have in the works along those lines.”

Code Brushes is powered by the controversial GitHub Copilot. Copilot uses technology from OpenAI to help generate code and speed up software development.

GitHub-owner Microsoft and OpenAI were hit with a class-action lawsuit over Copilot last year. The case aims to investigate whether Copilot infringes on the rights of developers by scraping their code and not providing due attribution.

“Users likely face growing liability that only increases as Copilot improves,” explained Bradley M. Kuhn of Software Freedom Conservancy earlier this year.

“Users currently have no methods besides serendipity and educated guesses to know whether Copilot’s output is copyrighted by someone else.”

Code Brushes has been added to the Copilot Labs Visual Studio Code extension. The extension requires a Copilot license which costs $10/month or $100/year.

(Photo by Marcus Urbenz on Unsplash)

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GitHub Copilot uses technology from OpenAI to help generate code and speed up software development. Microsoft says that it is trained on “billions of lines of public code … written by others.”

Last month, developer and lawyer Matthew Butterick announced that he’d partnered with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm to investigate whether Copilot infringed on the rights of developers by scraping their code and not providing due attribution.

This could unwittingly cause serious legal problems for GitHub Copilot users.

“Copilot leaves copyleft compliance as an exercise for the user. Users likely face growing liability that only increases as Copilot improves,” wrote Bradley M. Kuhn of Software Freedom Conservancy earlier this year.

“Users currently have no methods besides serendipity and educated guesses to know whether Copilot’s output is copyrighted by someone else.”

Copilot is powered by Codex, an AI system created by OpenAI and licensed to Microsoft. Codex currently offers suggestions on how to finish a line but Microsoft has touted its ability to suggest larger blocks of code, like the entire body of a function.

Butterick and litigators from the Joseph Saveri Law Firm have now filed a class-action lawsuit against Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI in a US federal court in San Francisco.

In addition to violating attribution requirements of open-source licenses, the claimants allege the defendants have violated:

• GitHub’s own terms of ser­vice and pri­vacy poli­cies;
• DMCA § 1202, which for­bids the removal of copy­right-man­age­ment infor­ma­tion;
• the Cal­i­for­nia Con­sumer Pri­vacy Act;
• and other laws giv­ing rise to related legal claims.

The claimants acknowledge that this is the first step in what will likely be a long journey.

In a post on the claim’s website, Butterick wrote:

“As far as we know, this is the first class-action case in the US chal­leng­ing the train­ing and out­put of AI sys­tems. It will not be the last. AI sys­tems are not exempt from the law. 

Those who cre­ate and oper­ate these sys­tems must remain account­able. If com­pa­nies like Microsoft, GitHub, and OpenAI choose to dis­re­gard the law, they should not expect that we the pub­lic will sit still.

AI needs to be fair & eth­i­cal for every­one. If it’s not, then it can never achieve its vaunted aims of ele­vat­ing human­ity. It will just become another way for the priv­i­leged few to profit from the work of the many.”

AI News will keep you updated on the progress of the lawsuit as it emerges.

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Copilot draws context from the code that a developer is working on and can suggest entire lines or functions. The system, from OpenAI, claims to be “significantly more capable than GPT-3” in generating code and can help even veteran programmers to discover new APIs or ways to solve problems.

Critics claim the system is using copyrighted code that GitHub then plans to charge for:

Julia Reda, a researcher and former MEP, published a blog post arguing that “GitHub Copilot is not infringing your copyright”.

GitHub – and therefore its owner, Microsoft – is using the huge number of repositories it hosts with ‘copyleft’ licenses for its tool. Copyleft allows open-source software or documentation to be modified and distributed back to the community.

Reda argues in her post that clamping down on tools such as GitHub’s through tighter copyright laws would harm copyleft and the benefits it offers.

One commenter isn’t entirely convinced:

“Lots of people have demonstrated that it pretty much regurgitates code verbatim from codebases with abandon. Putting GPL code inside a neural network does not remove the license if the output is the same as the input.

A large portion of what Copilot outputs is already full of copyright/license violations, even without extensions.”

Because the code is machine-generated, Reda also claims that it cannot be determined to be ‘derivative work’ that would face the wrath of intellectual property laws.

“Copyright law has only ever applied to intellectual creations – where there is no creator, there is no work,” says Reda. “This means that machine-generated code like that of GitHub Copilot is not a work under copyright law at all, so it is not a derivative work either.”

There is, of course, also a debate over whether the increasing amounts of machine-generated work should be covered under IP laws. We’ll let you decide your own position on the matter.

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GitHub Copilot uses an AI system from OpenAI known as OpenAI Codex. The system claims to have a broad knowledge of how people use code and claims to be “significantly more capable than GPT-3” in generating code.

By drawing context from the code that a developer is working on, the system is able to suggest entire lines or functions.

Even veteran coders can benefit from GitHub Copilot by using the system to explore new APIs and discover alternative ways to solve problems without having to scour the web for answers.

GitHub Pilot supports a wide range of programming languages and frameworks but the company says the technical preview works best with Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go.

There are currently only a limited number of spots available for the technical preview.

Find out more about GitHub Copilot and how to get started here.

Find out more about Digital Transformation Week North America, taking place on November 9-10 2021, a virtual event and conference exploring advanced DTX strategies for a ‘digital everything’ world.

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