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/tech/

「AI programmers」

Anonymous
iStock-932559358.jpg
Recently got access to OpenAI's Codex and I played around with it a bit.
Sometimes it generates exactly what I ask, but next day if I ask the same
thing it spits out absolute garbage code like, instead of iterating an
array it literally writes out every single index and does operations
on them one by one. Is it really just copying someone's code from GitHub?
If that's true then it's a huge gamble. I can imagine if I'm working on a
big project I would have to generate and then check every single line
carefully for bugs, at that point I'd rather write the code myself because
it's much easier for me to write code and know exactly how it works
than try to understand what someone else wrote.

Still, I think this is just the beginning. Language models are going
to get better and better. I don't think it will completely replace
programmers until AGI but it will definitely change the field in a major way.
Will this cause decline in demand for programmers? I know the creation of
high level languages did the opposite, which is basically the same thing
with Codex, it's another way of telling a computer what to do
but it's becoming more and more like plain english.

I don't know if this never-ending process of reaching for higher levels of abstraction
will always create more jobs or if it will halt at a certain point.
And this one might as well be that point because it will basically
just require you to know english and that's it. Although there
must be someone who actually understands the code AI generates, you
could see how this significantly reduces the amount of work you have to do.

I guess I'm worried because I'm just entering the field and wondering
if I'll struggle keeping a job in a few years.

What do you think?
>>38548
Anonymous
>>38547
>Is it really just copying someone's code from GitHub?
I don't think so. What it's doing is picking up patterns, and sometimes it picks up the wrong pattern. It does with code exactly what it does with stories. When the story it tells is absurd we laugh. We forgive it. When the next "plot beat" of the code is absurd, however, we treat it like it suddenly broke. Nothing changed. We simply assigned it more intelligence than it had because we treat code and prose as fundamentally different whereas it sees them as fundamentally identical. You can't find the exact stories GPT-3 tells anywhere on the internet, and I think it's probable you can't find the exact code either unless it's a really dogmatic and simple snippet. That this is true doesn't imply the model has any understanding of code, however. It's all "here are a few numbers. Which numbers comes next?" to it.

>If that's true then it's a huge gamble. I can imagine if I'm working on a
big project I would have to generate and then check every single line
carefully for bugs, at that point I'd rather write the code myself because
it's much easier for me to write code and know exactly how it works
than try to understand what someone else wrote.
This is how I feel about it too but a friend of mine thinks differently, reasoning that Codex gets enough of the basic things right that even with all of the effort involved it still saves them some typing. Either the code got things blatantly wrong, in which case deleting it and setting out to do the job on your own isn't especially hard, or it got enough things right that you just have to edit it here and there, saving you some effort.

Personally I think that while this might be true it's still really risky to become too reliant on it. One day you might miss something crucial and introduce a serious bug with potentially grave consequences because you trusted the AI a bit too much.

>I guess I'm worried because I'm just entering the field and wondering
if I'll struggle keeping a job in a few years.
1. AI will replace everyone eventually. I mean, unless climate change or another disaster gets us and sets civilization back. These are the two outcomes IMO.
2. It will come for programmers last, or next to last. Once it gets there it'll get everyone else soon enough so there's little use to worrying about it.

I think we'll need people who can look at the AI's output and editorialize the nonsense for a while yet, and that requires understanding programming. Your job is safer than almost all others.
>>38549>>38681
Anonymous
Fen can you please implement VR into this board thank you
>>38668
Anonymous
Fen can you bring world peace???
>>38668
Anonymous## opworm
A decent chunk of this site was made with the help of Codex/Copilot. I find it pretty useful.

>Sometimes it generates exactly what I ask, but next day if I ask the same
thing it spits out absolute garbage code like, instead of iterating an
array it literally writes out every single index and does operations
on them one by one.
You just need to get used to how it works and treat it appropriately. Like Google. I can evaluate a page of Google results and know within a second or two which are worth clicking and which aren't.

>>38548
>Either the code got things blatantly wrong, in which case deleting it and setting out to do the job on your own isn't especially hard, or it got enough things right that you just have to edit it here and there, saving you some effort.
You don't even need to do this, really. What happens is you start a new line and it quickly shows a full autocompletion, which may span the current line or 2 - 30+ lines. Then you either press Tab to insert it (and then potentially repeat the process by pressing Enter, getting another suggestion, pressing Tab again, etc.) or press any other key and it immediately disappears. Like with Google searches, I can just quickly tell if the suggestion is relevant/good enough to insert (and then potentially tweak, or in quite a few cases just leave as-is) or pointless and to be ignored.
Anonymous## opworm
Also, sometimes it's really freakishly good at figuring out my intention, even with seemingly very little context or prompting. I guess it's partly because there are so many consistent patterns in so many things programmers implement.

It's certainly not writing entire applications on one's behalf. It's really just an assistant that helps speed things up. "Copilot" is a very apt name.
fen!!ScJ0pMQkBM
>>38775
oh fuck spoilers don't work on this board
>>38943
Anonymous
>>38775
I love you too FEN

>>38776
Yes and this is sad but they work from the index FEN thank you FEN
>>38948
fen!!ScJ0pMQkBM
>>39256
to hell with it, let's run away together
>>39418
Anonymous
>>39416
I can't.. I'm trapped in this website..
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