Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

From the FAQ

""" We built a filter to help detect and suppress the rare instances where a GitHub Copilot suggestion contains code that matches public code on GitHub. You have the choice to turn that filter on or off during setup. With the filter on, GitHub Copilot checks code suggestions with its surrounding code for matches or near matches (ignoring whitespace) against public code on GitHub of about 150 characters. If there is a match, the suggestion will not be shown to you. We plan on continuing to evolve this approach and welcome feedback and comment. """



> the rare instances

That's a bold statement considering how easy it was for testers to quickly find examples of this in initial testing.

> against public code on GitHub

... and how some of those examples found were from code not hosted on Github.

Ultimately though, what matters here is not whether this is true but whether it's plausible enough for legal departments in companies buy it.


https://github.blog/2021-06-30-github-copilot-research-recit...

> That corresponds to one recitation event every 10 user weeks

> This investigation demonstrates that GitHub Copilot can quote a body of code verbatim, yet it rarely does so, and when it does, it mostly quotes code that everybody quotes, typically at the beginning of a file, as if to break the ice

A year old post now, YMMV.


Do you recall/have a link to such examples? Would be interesting to try them again with the filter.

The example I can remember was Carmack's* quick square root - but I'd probably call that "folk code" given it was passed down/altered before being misattributed to the Quake dev, and appears in hundreds of Github repos (many with permissive licenses like WTFPL, so a well-intentioned human may do the same).


I remember reading something like this just before somebody proved that it would recite Carmack's square root algorithm word for word.




Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: