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Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai AI is certainly not magic, and as an industry we're super far away from what would be considered real AI in the technica

Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai AI is certainly not magic, and as an industry we're super far away from what would be considered real AI in the technical sense. That being said, AI has become a catch all term for everything as simple as linear regressions, all the way through to neural networks. We don't claim to be able to write apps using AI, we're a platform that is trying to use AI and general automation in order to optimize the traditional SDLC. Actual code generation/synthesis is years away in my opinion and there is far more impact that can be had by going after other manual aspects of software development.

hitekker 7y ago
Great, since you're here: what's your comment on the allegation that engineer.ai defrauded investors with fake AI?
- rohan404 7y ago
  Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai We've been very transparent with our investors on where we are in the process of creating this platform both pre-investment and post. They actually responded to the WSJ article: A spokeswoman for Deepcore said it has complete confidence in Mr. Duggal’s vision and team. A spokesman for Jungle Ventures said it is a proud investor in Engineer.ai and its technology, adding that “the AI landscape is a varied spectrum.” A Lakestar spokeswoman said it also has confidence in Engineer.ai and its team, adding that “growth in the AI space does not happen overnight.” It said Engineer.ai had been very careful in presenting its technology to Lakestar and other investors
  - mikeryan 7y ago
    All due respect but I wouldn't expect a VC to say anything else. These guys want to be able to peddle their stake onto someone else in a future round. I'll be more interested in what those investors do in your next funding round.
vanadium 7y ago
I was trying to read up on the site to evaluate what you said, but the UI's horribly broken on Firefox latest. Not the best first impression.
- rohan404 7y ago
  Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai Apologies for that experience! We're currently working on a new iteration of that site and will be launching it very shortly. Come back soon and let us know what you think.
  - vanadium 7y ago
    Happy to do so; thanks for the head's up. I use Firefox exclusively and an increasing number of people I work with do as well, except for testing.
ammar2 7y ago
> we're a platform that is trying to use AI and general automation in order to optimize the traditional SDLC I don't think you can get away with corp-speak/buzzwords here this easily. Could you elaborate on how exactly you're using AI to "optimize" software development?
- rohan404 7y ago
  Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai Happy to elaborate - in a nutshell what we're trying to do is automate as many parts of the traditional software development lifecycle as we can, and for whatever cannot be automated, put in place the right tooling to allow for repeatable results. Our thesis is that most applications today have a huge amount of duplication at a code level, and process level. We're trying to use reusable building blocks (well structured libraries, templated user stories, wireframes, common errors, etc.), in order to immediately solve that duplication. That being said, we're not talking about automatic code generation, it's more about being able to assemble these reusable building blocks together at the beginning of a project so you have a better starting point. There will always be customization required for any project however, and that is a human led process. Apart from actual development, we're also trying to automate processes around project management, infrastructure management, and QA. For example, what we've already been able to do is automatically price and create timeline estimates for a project without any human involvement, determine which creators on our network are best suited for a given project, evaluate and onboard developers on to the network, setup developer environments, and a lot more!
  - ammar2 7y ago
    Sorry if I'm missing something obvious but it's not very clear to me how the first part significantly benefits from AI. Code re-use is just good software engineer practice, are you somehow able to figure out what libraries to use automatically? Isn't this trivial to perform by a human anyway? The latter part, as far as figuring out what work to assign and estimating time-frames does seem like a legitimate AI use case though.
    - rohan404 7y ago
gnulinux 7y ago
I'm very curious how are you using AI to optimize software engineering. Do you have a linter that catches bugs? Do you have a system that generates code from a very high level language? I'm really curious what is the actual part of software development you guys managed to automate. Saying "we use AI and automation to optimize software development" doesn't make any sense if you can't explain exactly which problem you guys managed to solve. When you go to an aerospace engineer you don't say "Hey! I managed to optimize airplane building". You say "Hey! I made this software that given your jet engine, optimizes it for cost/safety/efficiency!"
- rohan404 7y ago
  Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai It's not just one problem we're tackling, it's actually more like 40 small issues that we're working on. You actually named a few right there - static code analysis, automatic UI generation from YAML. I also want to be clear that not all of it is AI or ML. For example how we price and spec out ideas (https://builder.engineer.ai/ https://builder.engineer.ai/) is fully automated and leverages NLP and NNs, and how we handle developer verification uses facial recognition. However many of the problems we are going after don't require AI; heuristics based approaches and statistical models can actually have better results in many cases.
YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
Code generation is quite possible. See for example the one-shot program induction in Excel's FlashFill: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rishabh/papers/cacm12.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rishabh/papers/cacm12.pdf Which btw is absolutely an artificial intelligence application albeit one that has nothing to do with neural nets and deep learning. Perhaps, if your company has trouble with acquiring data and training large deep neural nets, you could benefit from looking at other techniques that do not have such stringent requirements and that are much better suited to smaller companies (i.e. anyone but Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix et al).
TrackerFF 7y ago
> That being said, AI has become a catch all term for everything as simple as linear regressions, all the way through to neural networks. And that's a problem. The problem is that this trend builds unrealistic expectations for pretty much anyone that doesn't know how the tech works. Business people imagine some magic box that will just churn out stuff with (close to) zero workers involved. Customers imagine the same magic box churning out tailored products built with AI fairy magic. Then reality sets in, and people (investors included) start losing faith, and we're onto the next AI winter.

hitekker 7y ago

Great, since you're here: what's your comment on the allegation that engineer.ai defrauded investors with fake AI?

rohan404 7y ago
Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai We've been very transparent with our investors on where we are in the process of creating this platform both pre-investment and post. They actually responded to the WSJ article: A spokeswoman for Deepcore said it has complete confidence in Mr. Duggal’s vision and team. A spokesman for Jungle Ventures said it is a proud investor in Engineer.ai and its technology, adding that “the AI landscape is a varied spectrum.” A Lakestar spokeswoman said it also has confidence in Engineer.ai and its team, adding that “growth in the AI space does not happen overnight.” It said Engineer.ai had been very careful in presenting its technology to Lakestar and other investors
- mikeryan 7y ago
  All due respect but I wouldn't expect a VC to say anything else. These guys want to be able to peddle their stake onto someone else in a future round. I'll be more interested in what those investors do in your next funding round.

vanadium 7y ago

I was trying to read up on the site to evaluate what you said, but the UI's horribly broken on Firefox latest. Not the best first impression.

rohan404 7y ago
Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai Apologies for that experience! We're currently working on a new iteration of that site and will be launching it very shortly. Come back soon and let us know what you think.
- vanadium 7y ago
  Happy to do so; thanks for the head's up. I use Firefox exclusively and an increasing number of people I work with do as well, except for testing.

ammar2 7y ago

> we're a platform that is trying to use AI and general automation in order to optimize the traditional SDLC I don't think you can get away with corp-speak/buzzwords here this easily. Could you elaborate on how exactly you're using AI to "optimize" software development?

rohan404 7y ago
Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai Happy to elaborate - in a nutshell what we're trying to do is automate as many parts of the traditional software development lifecycle as we can, and for whatever cannot be automated, put in place the right tooling to allow for repeatable results. Our thesis is that most applications today have a huge amount of duplication at a code level, and process level. We're trying to use reusable building blocks (well structured libraries, templated user stories, wireframes, common errors, etc.), in order to immediately solve that duplication. That being said, we're not talking about automatic code generation, it's more about being able to assemble these reusable building blocks together at the beginning of a project so you have a better starting point. There will always be customization required for any project however, and that is a human led process. Apart from actual development, we're also trying to automate processes around project management, infrastructure management, and QA. For example, what we've already been able to do is automatically price and create timeline estimates for a project without any human involvement, determine which creators on our network are best suited for a given project, evaluate and onboard developers on to the network, setup developer environments, and a lot more!
- ammar2 7y ago
  Sorry if I'm missing something obvious but it's not very clear to me how the first part significantly benefits from AI. Code re-use is just good software engineer practice, are you somehow able to figure out what libraries to use automatically? Isn't this trivial to perform by a human anyway? The latter part, as far as figuring out what work to assign and estimating time-frames does seem like a legitimate AI use case though.
  - rohan404 7y ago

gnulinux 7y ago

I'm very curious how are you using AI to optimize software engineering. Do you have a linter that catches bugs? Do you have a system that generates code from a very high level language? I'm really curious what is the actual part of software development you guys managed to automate. Saying "we use AI and automation to optimize software development" doesn't make any sense if you can't explain exactly which problem you guys managed to solve. When you go to an aerospace engineer you don't say "Hey! I managed to optimize airplane building". You say "Hey! I made this software that given your jet engine, optimizes it for cost/safety/efficiency!"

rohan404 7y ago
Disclaimer - I'm a VP E at Engineer.ai It's not just one problem we're tackling, it's actually more like 40 small issues that we're working on. You actually named a few right there - static code analysis, automatic UI generation from YAML. I also want to be clear that not all of it is AI or ML. For example how we price and spec out ideas (https://builder.engineer.ai/ https://builder.engineer.ai/) is fully automated and leverages NLP and NNs, and how we handle developer verification uses facial recognition. However many of the problems we are going after don't require AI; heuristics based approaches and statistical models can actually have better results in many cases.

YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago

Code generation is quite possible. See for example the one-shot program induction in Excel's FlashFill: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rishabh/papers/cacm12.pdf https://people.csail.mit.edu/rishabh/papers/cacm12.pdf Which btw is absolutely an artificial intelligence application albeit one that has nothing to do with neural nets and deep learning. Perhaps, if your company has trouble with acquiring data and training large deep neural nets, you could benefit from looking at other techniques that do not have such stringent requirements and that are much better suited to smaller companies (i.e. anyone but Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix et al).

TrackerFF 7y ago

> That being said, AI has become a catch all term for everything as simple as linear regressions, all the way through to neural networks. And that's a problem. The problem is that this trend builds unrealistic expectations for pretty much anyone that doesn't know how the tech works. Business people imagine some magic box that will just churn out stuff with (close to) zero workers involved. Customers imagine the same magic box churning out tailored products built with AI fairy magic. Then reality sets in, and people (investors included) start losing faith, and we're onto the next AI winter.