AI Learns to Write Computer Code in 'Stunning' Advance | Hacker News Reader

AI Learns to Write Computer Code in 'Stunning' Advance

developers.slashdot.org

6 pointssinuhe6911 comments

Alphacode's abilities are impressive but I don't have access to it. ChatGPT's abilities are good and I can use it right now. Today, I can ask it to write a simple calculator app in Rust and it does it less than 2 mins. I know 0 Rust. I suspect that giving it the right questions I can create more complex programs and in more languages. What will it be like 2 years from now? It's amazing.

How can you ship something that you do not know anything about, isn't this unethical.

What happen if there is a bug in the calculator , are you going to ask the AI to fix it?

Unethical? Not if you disclose it. Programmers, now, copy and paste code regularly. How ethical is that?

I see a situation where a programmer is familiar with the programming language and is able to modify code but the starting code is written by ChatGPT. The programer can then go thru the debugging and implementation process.

Artist and want-to-be artist using Dalle2 are having a similar argument. Artist have a point but that won't stop people from using it.

> Unethical? Not if you disclose it.

That's unfortunately not how many humans work.

Take VCR tape rewinding. It's one of those things you just let slip, because it's so inconvenient. Maybe you lie to yourself about the reason why. Or maybe not.

It doesn't matter. The video rental store is going to take advantage of human nature and find a new revenue stream.

And the system will find a new metaphorical revenue stream.

Software engineering unions and professional organizations and other things. Or maybe just more digital tracking. Not that these institutions are bad. I want my doctor to be accredited. I want individuals to have the right to organize if they truly feel exploited by management.

It just doesn't feel collaborative or cooperative here.

Anyways, it's tough to escape that human nature. I'm sorry for my mistakes.

True, but in time, it will be assumed that programmers use AI to write software. It's just another tool for programmers.

As far as revenue, yes, our economic system works on doing something for money. We haven't found a better way to allocate resources and get needs filled. So, someone will make a buck out of it. Without a revenue stream the whole system falls apart.

I'd expect AI to be better at writing code than at many other tasks, since programs have a natural form and encoding forced by the programming language, and the objective function is often (at least in online challenges) easy to evaluate and unambiguous.

On the other hand, interacting with real users and product managers might drive AI as insane as regular human programmers as it deals with ambiguous, contradictory, and constantly shifting requirements.

Found a very well written detailed analysis of the achievement of AlphaCode:

https://towardsdatascience.com/deepminds-alphacode-explained...

I guess sysadmins are safe - someone still has to turn the wheels.

Think twice about that. After Snowden's data dump, the NSA announced that they have a goal to remove all system administrators from their computer systems. Can it be done? I wouldn't bet against it. The US government has that goal and money is no object. Once they do it it's only a matter of time before it's part of all companies. It's not now but it will happen.

What does that have to do with sysadmins? Snowden's data dump was what, almost a decade ago?

That's like saying that the NSA has a goal to remove all janitors. Can it be done? I wouldn't bet against it. The US Government has the goal and money is no object.

At the end of the day, someone has to go in and replace the parts, troubleshoot issues, configure stuff. Those are sysadmins.

Just like janitors still need to clean the shit out of toilets.

I long for the day I have a janky robot companion to shove usb drives into machines and mash the del/f12 key for me

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