The training set for C was algol and a bunch of other languages.

AI could be used to create languages based on design criteria and constraints like C was, but it does bring up the question of why one of the constraints should be character encodings from human languages if the final generated language would never be used by humans...

I mainly think it's funny watching all of these Rand'ian objectivists reusing ever excuse used by every craftsman that was excised from working life...machines need a machinist, they don't have souls or creativity, etc.

Industry always saw open source as a way to cut cost. ML trained from open source has the capability to eliminate a giant sink of labor cost. They will use it to do so. Then they will use all of the arguments that people have parroted on this site for years to excuse it.

I'm a pessimist about the outcomes of this and other trends along with any potential responses to them.

The problem here is that copilot explots a loophole that allows it to produce derivative works without license. Copilot is not sophisticated enough to structure source code generally- it is overtrained. What is an overtrained neural network but memcpy?

the problem isn't even that this technology will eventually replace programmers: the problem is that it produces parts of the training set VERBATIM, sans copyright.

No, I am pretty optimistic that we will quickly come to a solution when we start using this to void all microsoft/github copyright.