GitHub Copilot CLI now in public beta

starman@programming.dev to Programming@programming.dev – 34 points –
GitHub Copilot in the CLI now in public beta
github.blog
15

You are viewing a single comment

Now they can also train their gray area trained model (trained upon our Github projects without consolidating with us if it was alright to do so) further!

By spying on every command you type in your CLI, and phoning home to MS about it, to train it further.

I guarantee you,
If you use it, you'll be their free training monkey.

And once they used you for free,
and the product improved enough,
they'll subscription charge you forever to make use of it.

Never ask

  • a man his salary

  • a woman her age

  • a corporation which thirld-world countries' empoverished population they exploit for cheap labor to make their "AI" economically viable

(trained upon our Github projects without consolidating with us if it was alright to do so)

Without having read it, I'd be willing to bet that the Copilot EULA requires users to agree not to sue Microsoft for any of their copyrights that might have been infringed. Personally, I think anybody who has a project on Github -- especially one with a copyleft license -- shouldn't touch Copilot with a ten-foot pole in order to preserve all their legal options.

Interestingly, OpenAI claims they will shoulder any legal burden resulting from copyright infringement their products enable. I guess they feel they're on sturdy enough ground and want to use their resources to ensure precedent is set

And that's one of the reasons why I won't use it.

What are the other reasons?

  • it is available only in GitHub Copilot Business license, I have the standard one
  • I would rather just type the command instead of using ML to type it for me
  • if I don't know which command should I use, I can just do a quick search and remember it for next time
  • I often have to use different machines, and it will be annoying to log in to github copilot every time

It is actually included in the standard license, just the documentation for enabling it is quite easy to misunderstand (it mentions several times that it's for business only, but what it means is needing to enable it is business only. It's already enabled for standard users). Confused me too.

All paid products do that that you use every day

Not on my machine. Or at least, I do everything humanly possible to limit it.

Either through:

  • Switching to FOSS alternatives
  • Custom patches applied to proprietary binaries.
  • Blocking network access for certain processes

I don't expect everyone to become a privacy expert though.

However I do believe systematic privacy is important, and that we should aim for better privacy laws to keep the intellectual property of the average user safe.

I mean yeah that's why I use local models that suck completely for code completion. But why single out copilot when every single electronic device is in a permanent war for cloud capital

Well, the post was about copilot,
so that's what my comment was about.

But I agree, fck all big-tech software.

If it's not produced by a non-profit as open source, then it's not worth your time.

(Due to anti-consumer practices, spy-ware/telemetry or vunerabilities to worry about)