Comment by zarzavat
6 days ago
If a human learns to code by reading other people's code, and then writes their own new code, should they have to attribute all the code they ever read?
Plagiarism is a concept from academia because in academia you rise through the ranks by publishing papers and getting citations. Using someone else's work but not citing them breaks that system.
The real world doesn't work like that: your value to the world is how much you improve it. It would not help the world if everyone were forced to account for all the shoulders they have stood on like academics do. Rather, it's sufficient to merely attribute your most substantial influences and leave it at that.
If a human copies someone else's code verbatim, they should attribute the source, yes. If they learn from it and write original code, no, they don't have to cite every single piece of code they've ever read
Yes, you've stated the current social and legal rule we have to follow.
But I don't think you've given any moral justification for the rule, and in particular, why LLMs (who are not humans and have no legal rights or obligations) have to follow it.
Is "taking credit for something someone else did is not very nice" not enough moral justification for you?
But some company owns the LLM, and they have legal rights and obligations. You don't get to use AI to launder breaking the law.