"Your GitHub account now includes free use of GitHub Copilot"
LOL get fucked
(my exact thought on receiving the same email)
@steinarb I thought: at least Office365 correctly placed this in my spam folder.
飛柳 @bignose@sw-development-is.social @jwz@mastodon.social That's exactly it. If it was something people were willing to pay for, then they wouldn't be giving it away for free.
@jwz I just got one of those, too. 
@jwz I should like to know why this is bad. Genuine query.
@AinsleyLowbeer If, in this, the Year of Our Dystopia 2024, you still don't know why Spicy Autocomplete is Bad, the only thing I have to say to you is *plonk*
@jwz That's not a real answer. One must be wary of using any AI response, certainly, but I would like your rationale.
@AinsleyLowbeer @jwz Obviously any form of AI is Literally Satan, don't you know?
@AinsleyLowbeer @jwz in case you're innocently naive about the subject: I can't speak for them, but training and operating AI models expends a huge amount of electricity. To make that worse, the facilities that host those kinds of workloads consume a large amount of fresh water for cooling, draining the local aquifer (or just even more power).
All this for work that's usually either not necessary at all or better done by systems and methods that have a much reduced energy cost.
There's also a lot of problematic behavior around usage rights of data used for training.
AST based auto complete is better for most needs. Copilot gives you code that looks reasonable, but is wrong is subtle ways and so when you use it you spend more time reviewing and correcting it than if you had just written the code by hand in the first place.
@jwz if it works for you, I found it frusterating and gave up.
@AinsleyLowbeer @jwz Copilot is kind of like Madlibs but for code. It's code-ish enough to be dangerous, but not good enough to be useful. It also appropriates other people's intellectual property like most other AI training.
@AinsleyLowbeer @jwz You're better off finding the code examples yourself that the AI crawled and starting with those, rather than having an AI frankenstein together something that could well confuse you more. Generally they only do a good job when almost reproducing an example verbatim. This is a fundamental problem with the way the AI is designed: it associates words and code with other words and code based on weighted frequency and can not build a formal, logical model of the code.
@profdc9 I actually learned some coding thanks to GPT...
I think telling people to not use AI cos "incapable" is a bad reason. For some people it works, especially if you know how to ask questions. Either way, AI is improving so that reason holds less and less water.
Real reasons to not use it, or for the very least abuse it, is due to environmental and ethical concerns. That's why i was thinking of stopping using AI altogether.
@AinsleyLowbeer @profdc9 @jwz it also kills creativity:
Those „CoPilots“ are trained on existing code (a problem itself!) and via association they are now suggesting those code patterns to all their users, sending them all down the same preexisting lanes and into similar directions.
When you look at a problem from scratch, you come up with your own, new, creative solution.
General problem with all AI, not just for code.
It meddles with the evolution of thinking and creation of solutions.
@EloPup @AinsleyLowbeer @jwz To be fair, most common programming tasks need little originality these days. It's more like plumbing where one is connecting modules and libraries together. There is certainly a need to simplify this kind of routine assembly, however, AI based on recursive neural networks is not right for this. Simplified scripting such as python helps but there is certainly much that could be improved about the situation.
@AinsleyLowbeer @jwz Have you considered the amount of energy and WATER wasted on maintaining those ai servers? Cause, in case you didn't notice, we are in a situation of climate emergency...
@Johns_priv @jwz None of them make any money. They'll be gone soon enough. Like the metaverse.
@jwz Note that they are not even consistent with no reply addresses.
@jwz I tried to find a ”disable everything even remotely related to AI, forever” button in their settings maze, but no luck. Anyone know if there is such a button?
If such a "never tell me about your #GenAI products again" button exists, you can be sure @mikaeleiman they will quickly remove it. They are *desperate* for *someone* to find a use for this thing and make it profitable for them.
@jwz lol, not just me getting that garbage then.
@jwz I was slightly pleasantly surprised to find I'd still have to explicitly turn it on if I wanted to use it, which I most definitely do not want to do. I expected to have been opted in and to have to turn it off in 4 places each 7 different levels deep in the advanced settings options.
@kimvanwyk @jwz Matches my experience. I’d still have to affirmatively twiddle a checkbox or a button or something to enable it (said checkbox or whatever will remain untwiddled). I have no idea if that’s the case for everyone, though.
@jwz Been forced to use a Windows machine for work for the first time in decades. Damn, they are pulling out every scuzzy anti-pattern for Copilot.
1. 365 comes up with Copilot selected
2. Default first app shown on 365 app list, alphabetical or no
3. If you remove it from your taskbar, only option in menus is to re-pin it
I'm expecting it to be a default option in every drop down menu, and every time autocomplete gets a 'c', it suggests "copilot."
@jwz See...now that's why I won't use Copilot. To think that other people are using an AI trained on the crap I put on my github and threw down on Stackoverflow--I'm not sure weather to laugh or be like sad for them or something.
I mean...I don't want this shit in my production code: https://github.com/crazy-eddie/arduino_modern/blob/capacities/include/hardware/chip/atmega328p.hpp
It's cute. It was fun. It actually works and is a massive perf improvement to arduino scetches...but don't do this, please.
I shudder to think what effect that has on its biases.
@crazyeddie I teach webdev to university students and I have seen general understanding of basic principles and code comprehension clearly drop since ChatGPT et al came out. I try my best to explain why it hurts learning even if you ignore the climate issues, but my logic can't outperform the "it's easier" and "I feel like I understand" reactions.
If this is the behavior of those in a place to understand the flaws with it, I shudder at the response in the general public.
@jwz Pretty much my response when the email dropped.
Then proceeded with insta-regret feelz for having an GitHub account in the first place.
@lilybryght The only reason I have or have ever had a GitHub account is because there are other people who have made the poor life choice of having that be the only way to report bugs to them.
@jwz A product so great, they struggle to give it away for free
@jwz environmental and privacy concerns notwithstanding, I also believe that using copilot and its ilk is cheating yourself out valuable learning opportunities
@jwz sent me one email per registered address... thanks! I wanted to be nagged about this FOUR TIMES.
@jwz I thought the same.
You already fed Microsoft the teaching data...
...might as well pick the grapes...err...raisins, of your hard work 
Yup, me too. The wheels are starting to come off, I think.
They'd rather have people using it for free than let shareholders see all that investment in hardware and training sitting idle...
@jwz Did you figure out a way to make sure it doesn't activate in the future? I _think_ it still starts as "off" for now. I checked my settings and it _seems_ off.
I keep most of my repos on GitLab, but I do fork things on GitHub to contribute drive-by patches. So, I don't think I'm contributing much corpus to the models...
@jwz only sent to every single email associated with the account 
@jwz i saw someone say this is microsofts version of 'auto installing a U2 album into the machine'
@jwz I am once again incorrectly surprised that they did this - it seems perfectly obvious that there's no money to be made with this stuff, why the hell do they keep doubling down? At some point the server bills are gonna kick them in the ass.
@jwz
Next step: Autopilot!
We don’t even need to take action anymore 
.
And the autopilots of all the different applications can then battle it out between themselves who gets deeper access to all the personal data…
Weird. Mine comes with free Ollama + Codium + Open WebUI + Continue + Cline + Tailscale.
@jwz This was followed at work by an official reminder that it's banned.