Copilot high jinks

Mar 31, 2023, 5:51 am
#1
Joined: Sep 8, 2010
Occupation: Petty Functionary
Location: Drinking pea soup in the world map
Interests: Mangoes
Posts: 1,216
This post is going to be a tiny bit spoily, but I thought I'd challenge GitHub Copilot's knowledge of IVAN a little bit. Since IVAN is GPL2, Copilot is not supposed to spit out IVAN's source word for word, but we can still make it produce something familiar looking...

The IVAN sources have a lot of unique code references which correspond to many in-game gags and peculiarities. Take Banana::zap() for instance:

https://github.com/Attnam/ivan/blob/5d28c1aa2988e8f8ffa20501...

Jumping into VSCode, I slapped in a bit of Banana::zap() and with a bit of coaxing got it to complete a little bit of authentic GPLed code:



Ok, so we backed Copilot into a bit of a corner there. It seems "disfunctional" is the only word that fits there right? Well that's because it is, since the correct spelling is "dysfunctional". Hah!

Next, let's see if it will spit out more IVAN code:



We have got a nice big chunk of fresh braiiinz Copilot code. It's not quite the rest of the banana::Zap() function, but it sure has some very IVANesque code in there, which I'm sure those familiar with the source's idiosyncrasies will agree.

Looking again, I know IVAN's bodypart system is detailed, but I'm not entirely convinced you can do neck damage. Is Copilot starting to hallucinate? Or is it something more sinister? Is it really a kind of self-sabotaging anti-GPL straight jacket? I don't think we will find out here, but we might find out over time.

With Copilot you can pick other suggestions, so we'll see what else gets suggested by this LLM:



Heh, this one got a genuine laugh from me. First Copilot wants to throw the goddam banana. ("Hey! I'm zappin' here!")
Next, if there are insufficient charges, Copilot wants to inform the player their banana has run out of juice!! Oh my, that had me giggling like a schoolgirl I swear.

Come on Copilot, give me more!



The LLM insists on throwing the banana, not bothering to test whether it hits its intended target it promptly wishes to dispose of the banana by calling SendToHell() -- in other words freeing the memory occupied by the banana. SendToHell() is highly idiomatic to the IVAN codebase, not to mention the banana::Zap() function itself. Using IVAN's code can potentially be a high acuity litmus test to check whether GPLed code comes out of an LLM such as Copilot. Not that any of this nonsense would compile. To be fair, when l learned Copilot was trained on IVAN's source I was like "are you sure you want to do that Bill?", and the results speak in large part for themselves. But all up, it's definitely entertaining at least. Neck damage... Maybe Copilot is onto something?
Batman? wrote
its been so long since i had gotten that far i didnt think it through. arrrr!!!!!!
Mar 31, 2023, 8:31 pm
#2
Joined: Dec 2, 2007
Location: New Attnam
Interests: bananas
Posts: 2,299
wow yeah that is suspiciously IVANesque especially the SendToHell bit

I vote we sue Github, collect a nice payment, and use that for fejoa to work on IVAN full time
Mar 31, 2023, 8:35 pm
#3
Joined: Dec 2, 2007
Location: New Attnam
Interests: bananas
Posts: 2,299
"Been Caught Stealing" is suddenly stuck in my head
Apr 1, 2023, 12:48 am
#4
Joined: Dec 3, 2007
Occupation: Chaos Weaver
Location: Standing between all life and death
Posts: 2,888
Ahahaha, SendToHell is great.
Uchuudonge wrote
creating stable chaos
making patterns where there should be none
sewing order into the chaos
you spit in the face of random numbers, of chaos
Apr 2, 2023, 3:32 pm
#5
Joined: Apr 2, 2014
Occupation: Navastating
Location: Aslona
Posts: 764
Quote
ADD_MESSAGE("Your banana is out of juice!");

This is wonderful.
Jump to