Look, I recognize that it’s possible for LLMs to produce code that is literally someone else’s copyrighted code. However, the way I use copilot is almost exclusively to autocomplete my thoughts. Like, I write enough code until it guesses what I was about to write next. If that happens to be open source code that someone else has written, then it is complete coincidence that I thought of writing that code. Not all thoughts are original.

Further, whether I should be at fault for LLM vendors who may be breaking copyright law, is like trying to make a case for me being at fault for murder because I drive a car when car manufacturers lobby to the effect that people die more.

Ahh right, so when I use copilot to autocomplete the creation of more tests in exactly the same style of the tests I manually created with my own conscious thought, you’re saying that it’s really just copying what someone else wrote? If you really believe that, then you clearly don’t understand how LLMs work.

That might be the goal but it is a long way away. The current models have no chance of replacing a skilled engineer. We will need completely new types of models to start getting close to that.