How Ai Is Revolutionising Computer Programming

When software developer Nikolai Avteniev got his hands on a preview version of Microsoft's Copilot coding assistant in 2021, he quickly saw the potential.

Developed by Microsoft's GitHub coding platform and based on a version of OpenAI's generative artificial intelligence, the assistant wasn't perfect and sometimes got things wrong. But Avteniev, who works for US ticket seller StubHub, was surprised by how ably it finished lines of code with just a few prompts. All he had to do was press the tab key, and Copilot filled in the rest.

"Instead of using 15 keystrokes, it took three," he recalled recently. "It was nice a little speed boost."

Three years later, and now infused with the latest version of OpenAI's GPT-4 technology, GitHub's Copilot can do a lot more, including answering engineers' questions and converting code from one programming language to another. As a result, the assistant is responsible for an increasingly significant percentage of the software being written and is even being used to program corporations' critical systems.

Along the way, Copilot is gradually revolutionising the working lives of software engineers - the first professional cohort to use generative AI en masse. Microsoft says Copilot has attracted 1.3 million customers so far, including 50 000 businesses ranging from small start-ups to corporations like Goldman Sachs, Ford and Ernst Young. Engineers say Copilot saves them hundreds of hours a month by handling tedious and repetitive tasks, affording them time to focus on knottier challenges.

Generative AI is the latest in a long line of innovations that have transformed computer coding over the years. Last century, program compilers accelerated software development by rapidly translating commands into ones and zeroes that computers can understand. More recently, Linux popularised open-source coding, letting programmers leverage one another's work rather than writing everything from scratch.

Coding assistants like GitHub's Copilot could be even more revolutionary because generative AI holds the potential power to automate large swathes of what software engineers currently do.

For now, it mostly makes them more efficient. StubHub's Avteniev, who also teaches software engineering at City College of New York, says Copilot's predictive ability helps programmers stay in "the flow" because they no longer have to stop to look things up. Avteniev has been coding for more than 20 years, but even he sometimes forgets programming languages - forcing him to waste time Googling them. "Copilot stops you from having to exit your current coding process," he said. "Even when it produces gibberish, it's still easier to just accept what it does and then correct it myself."

Aaron Hedges, a developer for more than 15 years, was getting burned out before Copilot arrived. Hedges works for ReadMe, a start-up that helps companies create technical descriptions of their application programming interfaces, or APIs. Like Avteniev, he makes good use of Copilot's auto-complete function. "Because I'm a fairly senior engineer, I can look at that and go, 'Oh yeah, that looks right.'" He also likes that he can ask questions without leaving his programming window. "I don't have to shift away and open a browser, which can be really disruptive," he said.

At $10/month, a Copilot subscription is a bargain that Hedges willingly pays himself. After work, he builds websites for Dungeons Dragons fans. With a toddler and another baby on the way, leisure time is precious. "Those two hours I get to myself to code in the evening are super important to me," he said. "The more efficient I can be, the better."

Few tasks are more tedious than debugging software - a process that can consume as much as 50% of an engineer's time. Figma, which helps developers design app or website interfaces, says Copilot can create defect-testing programs in minutes rather than hours. "That is the real value of AI," said Abhishek Mathur, the company's vice president of engineering. "It doesn't replace our work, but frees up our time to develop creative solutions."

Some companies are starting to deploy Copilot to create code for critical systems. Brewer Carlsberg uses it to write code for an existing tool that helps the sales force plan, prepare for and document sales calls. Mindful of Copilot's limitations, the beer maker uses its own quality-assurance process to check that the code it has created works as intended, according to CIO Sarah Haywood. Eventually, she said, companies will be able to outsource that task as well. "As time goes on, people will build more trust in AI," she said. "I don't think we should be having to double-check everything that AI does, otherwise we're not really adding any value."