3 ms·

Where I work we are actively encouraged to use more AI tools while coding, to the point where my direct supervisor asked why my team’s usage statistics were low

Where I work we are actively encouraged to use more AI tools while coding, to the point where my direct supervisor asked why my team’s usage statistics were lower than company average.

dehrmann 2y ago
It's not necessarily the use of AI tools (though the license parts are an issue), is that someone submitted code for review without knowing how it works.
- masteruvpuppetz 2y ago
  I think we should / have already reached to a place where AI written code is acceptable.
  - bigstrat2003 2y ago
    Whether it's acceptable or not to submit AI code, it is clearly unacceptable to submit code that you don't even understand. If that's all an employee is capable of, why on earth would the employer pay them software engineer salary versus hiring someone to do the exact same for minimum wage?
    - userbinator 2y ago
      Or even replace them with the AI directly.
  - dpig_ 2y ago
    What a god awful thing to hear.
  - bsder 2y ago
    The problem is that "AI" is likely whitewashing the copyright from proprietary code. I asked one of the "AI" assistants to do a very specific algorithmic problem for me and it did. And included unit tests which just so happened to hit all the exact edge cases that you would need to test for with the algorithm. The "AI assistant" very clearly regurgitated the code of somebody. I, however, couldn't find a particular example of that code no matter how hard I searched. It is extremely likely that the regurgitated code was not open source. Who is liable if I incorporate that code into my product?
    - kybernetikos 2y ago
      This seems like you don't believe that AI can produce correct new work, but it absolutely can. I've no idea whether in this case it directly copied someone else's work, but I don't think that it writing good unit tests is evidence that it did - that's it doing what it was built to do. And you searching and failing to find a source is weak evidence that it did not.
      - bsder 2y ago
        There is no way on this planet that an LLM "created" the exact unit tests needed to catch all the edge cases--it would even take a human quite a bit of thought to catch them all. If you change the programming language, the unit tests disappear and the "generated" code loses the nice abstractions. It's clearly regurgitating the Python code and "generating" the code for other languages.
    - guappa 2y ago
      According to microsoft: "the user". There's companies that scan code to see if it matches known open source code or not. However they probably just scan github so they won't even have a lot of the big projects.
- xiasongh 2y ago
  Didn't people already do that before, copy and pasting code off stack overflow? I don't like it either but this issue has always existed, but perhaps it is more common now
  - hackable_sand 2y ago
    Maybe it's because I'm self-taught, but I have always accounted for every line I push. It's insulting that companies are paying people to cosplay as programmers.
    - guappa 2y ago
      I've seen self taught and graduates alike do that.
    - ascorbic 2y ago
      It's probably more common among self-taught programmers (and I say that as one myself). Most go through the early stage of copying chunks of code and seeing if they work. Maybe not blindly copying it, but still copying code from examples or whatever. I know I did (except it was 25 years ago from Webmonkey or the php.net comments section rather than StackOverflow). I'd imagine formally-educated programmers can skip some (though not all) of that by having to learn more of the theory at first.
      - hackable_sand 2y ago
        If people are being paid to copy and run random code, more power to them. I wouldn't have dreamt of getting a programming job until I was literate.
  - rixed 2y ago
    Or importing a new library that's not been audited. Or compile it with a compiler that's not been audited? Or run it on silicon that's not been audited? We can draw the line in many places. I would take generated code that a rookie obtained from an llm and copied without understanding all of it, but that he has thoughtfully tested, over something he authored himself and submitted for review without enough checks.
- johnisgood 2y ago
  I use AI these days and I know how things work, there really is a huge difference. It helps me make AI write me code faster and the way I want it, something I could do, except more slowly.

Where I work we are actively encouraged to use more AI tools while coding, to the point where my direct supervisor asked why my team’s usage statistics were lower than company average.

dehrmann 2y ago

It's not necessarily the use of AI tools (though the license parts are an issue), is that someone submitted code for review without knowing how it works.

masteruvpuppetz 2y ago
I think we should / have already reached to a place where AI written code is acceptable.
- bigstrat2003 2y ago
  Whether it's acceptable or not to submit AI code, it is clearly unacceptable to submit code that you don't even understand. If that's all an employee is capable of, why on earth would the employer pay them software engineer salary versus hiring someone to do the exact same for minimum wage?
  - userbinator 2y ago
    Or even replace them with the AI directly.
- dpig_ 2y ago
  What a god awful thing to hear.
- bsder 2y ago
  The problem is that "AI" is likely whitewashing the copyright from proprietary code. I asked one of the "AI" assistants to do a very specific algorithmic problem for me and it did. And included unit tests which just so happened to hit all the exact edge cases that you would need to test for with the algorithm. The "AI assistant" very clearly regurgitated the code of somebody. I, however, couldn't find a particular example of that code no matter how hard I searched. It is extremely likely that the regurgitated code was not open source. Who is liable if I incorporate that code into my product?
  - kybernetikos 2y ago
    This seems like you don't believe that AI can produce correct new work, but it absolutely can. I've no idea whether in this case it directly copied someone else's work, but I don't think that it writing good unit tests is evidence that it did - that's it doing what it was built to do. And you searching and failing to find a source is weak evidence that it did not.
    - bsder 2y ago
      There is no way on this planet that an LLM "created" the exact unit tests needed to catch all the edge cases--it would even take a human quite a bit of thought to catch them all. If you change the programming language, the unit tests disappear and the "generated" code loses the nice abstractions. It's clearly regurgitating the Python code and "generating" the code for other languages.
  - guappa 2y ago
    According to microsoft: "the user". There's companies that scan code to see if it matches known open source code or not. However they probably just scan github so they won't even have a lot of the big projects.
xiasongh 2y ago
Didn't people already do that before, copy and pasting code off stack overflow? I don't like it either but this issue has always existed, but perhaps it is more common now
- hackable_sand 2y ago
  Maybe it's because I'm self-taught, but I have always accounted for every line I push. It's insulting that companies are paying people to cosplay as programmers.
  - guappa 2y ago
    I've seen self taught and graduates alike do that.
  - ascorbic 2y ago
    It's probably more common among self-taught programmers (and I say that as one myself). Most go through the early stage of copying chunks of code and seeing if they work. Maybe not blindly copying it, but still copying code from examples or whatever. I know I did (except it was 25 years ago from Webmonkey or the php.net comments section rather than StackOverflow). I'd imagine formally-educated programmers can skip some (though not all) of that by having to learn more of the theory at first.
    - hackable_sand 2y ago
      If people are being paid to copy and run random code, more power to them. I wouldn't have dreamt of getting a programming job until I was literate.
- rixed 2y ago
  Or importing a new library that's not been audited. Or compile it with a compiler that's not been audited? Or run it on silicon that's not been audited? We can draw the line in many places. I would take generated code that a rookie obtained from an llm and copied without understanding all of it, but that he has thoughtfully tested, over something he authored himself and submitted for review without enough checks.
johnisgood 2y ago
I use AI these days and I know how things work, there really is a huge difference. It helps me make AI write me code faster and the way I want it, something I could do, except more slowly.