alt Hacker NewsThe primary reason why it worked is because Claude could rip off the Linux driver. Without any prior work to rely on, how will the AI figure out proprietary hardware?
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- have AI write a windows filter driver to capture all hardware communications
- have AI reverse engineer Windows WiFi driver and make a crude prototype
- have AI compare registers captured by filter driver with linux driver version and iterate until they match (or at least functional tests pass)
not exactly rocket surgery, and windows device drivers generally don't have DRM/obfuscation, so reverse engineering them isn't hard for LLMs.
The Linux driver in this case is ISC licensed. There’s no legal or ethical problem in porting it. This is open source working as intended.
I feel like the jury is still out on whether this is acceptable for GPL code. Suppose you get agent 1 to make a clear and detailed specification from reading copyrighted code (or from reverse engineering). Then get agent 2 to implement a new driver using the specification. Is there anything wrong with that?
Trial and error?
Just like it does when given an existing GPL’d source and dealing with its hallucinations, the agent could be operated on a black box (or a binary Windows driver and a disassembly)?
The GPL code helped here but as long as the agent can run in a loop and test its work against a piece of hardware, I don’t see why it couldn’t do the same without any code given enough time?
Combine AI + genetic algo?
https://www.reddit.com/r/learnmachinelearning/comments/1665d...
True. But also -- how do humans do it? There are docs and there's other similar driver code. I wouldn't be surprised if Claude could build new driver code sight-unseen, given the appropriate resources
GPL is not a patent. It covers the work and _derivatives_; it does not cover ideas or general knowledge. The chip in question has docs.
I fully expect that Claude wrote code that does not resemble that of the driver in the Linux tree. TFA is taking on some liability if it turns out that the code Claude wrote does largely resemble GPL'ed code, but if TFA is not comfortable with the code written by Claude not resembling existing GPL'ed code then they can just post their prompts and everyone who needs this driver can go through the process of getting Claude to code it.
In court TFA would be a defendant, so TFA needs to be sure enough that the code in question does not resemble GPL'ed code. Here in the court of public opinion I'd say that claims of GPL violation need to be backed up by a serious similarity analysis.
Prompts cannot possibly be considered derivatives of the GPL'ed code that Claude might mimic.
Repurposing NDIS drivers is a time honored tradition. No source, but oh well.
It could be given reference material like documentation/datasheets and/or just be prompted as to how it should work.
I haven't read the article but my first question was, install wifibox?
It's a bhyve VM running alpine Linux and you pass through your WiFi adaptor and get a bridge out on the freebsd host.
He also mentioned it took 2 months. I’m actually wondering how long it would take to do the Linux to BSD port by eyeball, or at least ai assisted. Probably not that much longer? I guess it depends on wall time vs real time.