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DeepMind says its new AI coding engine is as good as an average human programmer

24 points by itvision 5y ago

itvision 5y ago
Blog post: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Competitive-programming-with-AlphaCode https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Competitive-programming-wi... Demonstration: https://alphacode.deepmind.com/ https://alphacode.deepmind.com/ This is scary and amazing. What's next? AlphaCode writing itself? Super intelligence? I'm not talking "scary" in terms of robotic overlords, I'm talking about companies possibly getting rid of programmers and the whole industry getting a lot more difficult to enter. I can certainly envisage AlphaCode turning interface mockups into actual HTML code or HTML code generators - a ton of work goes into that and it's quite tedious and ungrateful.
Wiseacre 5y ago
That was the sound of thousands and thousands of developers realizing they love the idea of unions and UBI.
- cam0 5y ago
  The managers are the ones that should be worried.
- drran 5y ago
  Who will fix bugs in code generated by AI?
  - Tajnymag 5y ago
    Different AI?
Jyaif 5y ago
A nightmare scenario for _every_ programmer. It doesn't matter if you think you are doing complex programming that is not [yet] automatable: all the programmers whose job can be automated will be coming for your job.
- belter 5y ago
  Yeah...Then we get to the debugging part.:-)
- cartercole 5y ago
  If they can automate away my job I hope they do
- drran 5y ago
  Compilers automated 99.9% of work already.
- Rury 5y ago
  Not at all. Programmers will simply become the people instructing the AI on what to code/program. Just as higher level programming languages "eliminated" or "automated" programming in machine code...
thrower123 5y ago
The average human programmer isn't very good, so I'm not sure that is the achievement that they should be shooting for.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  It's a major milestone. When a computer became as good at chess as an average human player, it was only a step removed from beating Kasparov.
vidarh 5y ago
While it's impressive, competing on a well specified problem does not compete with a typical developer. A very small part of an average human programmers job involves well specified problems.
Buttons840 5y ago
> AlphaCode was tested on 10 of challenges that had been tackled by 5,000 users on the Codeforces site. > “I was sceptical [sic] because even in simple competitive problems it is often required not only to implement the algorithm, but also (and this is the most difficult part) to invent it.” So AlphaCode can "invent" a solution after seeing 5,000 other solutions? I'm not clear, is it producing an answer to a unique question? Or is it doing the same work a single solution plus copy and paste could do? Considering how many of us do CRUD tasks all day, every day, this might be surprisingly effective. The question is, will unique work take the place of those CRUD tasks we've all done 5,000 times?
cartercole 5y ago
That's not saying much...
ncmncm 5y ago
If it codes what people actually ask for, they will be very, very dissatisfied.
Justsignedup 5y ago
I will say this... If there's an AI that when given inputs can create a super efficient program that calculates the right outputs, it would be an AMAZING tool in programming. The few times I need to write such functions, a ridiculous time saving would occur and let me/other engineers focus on the test cases. Will such a program actually solve the need to have engineers? No. Will such a program actually assist engineers with things that a computer can actually be really good for? Absolutely. 90% of the time a solution is good enough. The problem is when we need to optimize, but that's okay, we can have humans take over and figure out if the AI did something that could be improved upon, or if the problem space needs to be changed. Point is, its a fantastic tool. Yay. Now let's figure out how to make practical usage of it.
- Tajnymag 5y ago
  GitHub Copilot is already available and it's surprisingly usable. Well, not in a "here's a description of a program and create everything from scratch", but it can already create simple functions by reading the comments or the function's signature.
errantmind 5y ago
I see a new enterprise paradigm in our future, with hordes of consultants jockeying to 'enable' enterprises to downsize their development costs. All that is needed is a new role: auto-developer operations. This new role promises to cut costs without losing any developer velocity, in fact it increases velocity (see carefully chosen, unreproducible productivity paper on arxiv). It accomplishes this by allowing an auto-developer to guide an AI to generate code in line with industry best practices. Hype!
- Buttons840 5y ago
  Following that, the question is, will AI improve enough to pay off its own tech debt? If it can't, everyone will have to hire 10x the number of developers.
CrzyLngPwd 5y ago
Phew, glad I am not just average haha. I've seen many tools that claim to save dev time or make it so you don't need any devs and they do indeed take a lot of the chore out of it, but the remaining 20% is what takes 80% of the time.

24 points by itvision 5y ago

Blog post: https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Competitive-programming-with-AlphaCode https://deepmind.com/blog/article/Competitive-programming-wi... Demonstration: https://alphacode.deepmind.com/ https://alphacode.deepmind.com/ This is scary and amazing. What's next? AlphaCode writing itself? Super intelligence? I'm not talking "scary" in terms of robotic overlords, I'm talking about companies possibly getting rid of programmers and the whole industry getting a lot more difficult to enter. I can certainly envisage AlphaCode turning interface mockups into actual HTML code or HTML code generators - a ton of work goes into that and it's quite tedious and ungrateful.

Wiseacre 5y ago

That was the sound of thousands and thousands of developers realizing they love the idea of unions and UBI.

cam0 5y ago
The managers are the ones that should be worried.
drran 5y ago
Who will fix bugs in code generated by AI?
- Tajnymag 5y ago
  Different AI?

Jyaif 5y ago

A nightmare scenario for _every_ programmer. It doesn't matter if you think you are doing complex programming that is not [yet] automatable: all the programmers whose job can be automated will be coming for your job.

belter 5y ago
Yeah...Then we get to the debugging part.:-)
cartercole 5y ago
If they can automate away my job I hope they do
drran 5y ago
Compilers automated 99.9% of work already.
Rury 5y ago
Not at all. Programmers will simply become the people instructing the AI on what to code/program. Just as higher level programming languages "eliminated" or "automated" programming in machine code...

thrower123 5y ago

The average human programmer isn't very good, so I'm not sure that is the achievement that they should be shooting for.

newsbinator 5y ago
It's a major milestone. When a computer became as good at chess as an average human player, it was only a step removed from beating Kasparov.

vidarh 5y ago

While it's impressive, competing on a well specified problem does not compete with a typical developer. A very small part of an average human programmers job involves well specified problems.

Buttons840 5y ago

> AlphaCode was tested on 10 of challenges that had been tackled by 5,000 users on the Codeforces site. > “I was sceptical [sic] because even in simple competitive problems it is often required not only to implement the algorithm, but also (and this is the most difficult part) to invent it.” So AlphaCode can "invent" a solution after seeing 5,000 other solutions? I'm not clear, is it producing an answer to a unique question? Or is it doing the same work a single solution plus copy and paste could do? Considering how many of us do CRUD tasks all day, every day, this might be surprisingly effective. The question is, will unique work take the place of those CRUD tasks we've all done 5,000 times?

cartercole 5y ago

That's not saying much...

ncmncm 5y ago

If it codes what people actually ask for, they will be very, very dissatisfied.

Justsignedup 5y ago

I will say this... If there's an AI that when given inputs can create a super efficient program that calculates the right outputs, it would be an AMAZING tool in programming. The few times I need to write such functions, a ridiculous time saving would occur and let me/other engineers focus on the test cases. Will such a program actually solve the need to have engineers? No. Will such a program actually assist engineers with things that a computer can actually be really good for? Absolutely. 90% of the time a solution is good enough. The problem is when we need to optimize, but that's okay, we can have humans take over and figure out if the AI did something that could be improved upon, or if the problem space needs to be changed. Point is, its a fantastic tool. Yay. Now let's figure out how to make practical usage of it.

Tajnymag 5y ago
GitHub Copilot is already available and it's surprisingly usable. Well, not in a "here's a description of a program and create everything from scratch", but it can already create simple functions by reading the comments or the function's signature.

errantmind 5y ago

I see a new enterprise paradigm in our future, with hordes of consultants jockeying to 'enable' enterprises to downsize their development costs. All that is needed is a new role: auto-developer operations. This new role promises to cut costs without losing any developer velocity, in fact it increases velocity (see carefully chosen, unreproducible productivity paper on arxiv). It accomplishes this by allowing an auto-developer to guide an AI to generate code in line with industry best practices. Hype!

Buttons840 5y ago
Following that, the question is, will AI improve enough to pay off its own tech debt? If it can't, everyone will have to hire 10x the number of developers.

CrzyLngPwd 5y ago

Phew, glad I am not just average haha. I've seen many tools that claim to save dev time or make it so you don't need any devs and they do indeed take a lot of the chore out of it, but the remaining 20% is what takes 80% of the time.