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Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

theregister.com

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Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#71

Post by wolfram74 »

digitalsushi wrote: post #40
lumb63 wrote: post #21

Surprising. If only there were a way that we could have foreseen that an AI trained to write code in part by looking at people who, self-admittedly, don’t know how to write code, and people who write code for others with minimal context (Stack Overflow), would produce buggy code. It is a case of GIGO. Most developers do not learn much from Stack Overflow. Why do we expect AI to fare better? In my experience, one in t…

If I had a little robot riding in the passenger seat that could tell me whether to go left, straight, or right, and it was correct 90% of the time, I'd think that was pretty great. I'd get where I needed to be, even with a couple mishaps. ML code suggestions are the same thing to me. If I don't know where I am going, I can just ask it for suggestions. And it's probably going to be what I want. In both cases, I am ann…

Your example hinges on at least two things

1) How many turns do you take on a particular trip

2) How do those wrong turns end up? if it's "travel time extended by 30 seconds" or "My car, the car I hit and the side of this building are all in shambles" changes what a 10% failure rate means a lot.

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#72

Post by Salgat »

digitalsushi wrote: post #40
lumb63 wrote: post #21

Surprising. If only there were a way that we could have foreseen that an AI trained to write code in part by looking at people who, self-admittedly, don’t know how to write code, and people who write code for others with minimal context (Stack Overflow), would produce buggy code. It is a case of GIGO. Most developers do not learn much from Stack Overflow. Why do we expect AI to fare better? In my experience, one in t…

If I had a little robot riding in the passenger seat that could tell me whether to go left, straight, or right, and it was correct 90% of the time, I'd think that was pretty great. I'd get where I needed to be, even with a couple mishaps. ML code suggestions are the same thing to me. If I don't know where I am going, I can just ask it for suggestions. And it's probably going to be what I want. In both cases, I am ann…

The problem with ML is that it's pattern recognition, it's an approximation. Code is absolute, it's logic that is interpreted very literally and very exactly. This is what makes it so dangerous for coding; it creates code that's convincing to humans but with deviations that allow for all sorts of bugs. And the worst part is, since you didn't write the code, you may not have the skills (or time) to figure out if those bugs exist, especially if the ML is extremely convincing/clever in what it writes. I would argue that this overhead is even worse for productivity over just writing it yourself.

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#73

Post by eks391 »

eks391 wrote: post #69
ilaksh wrote: post #4

I made a site using the OpenAI APIs new models (similar to ChatGPT) for creating simple apps or demos using natural language: https://aidev.codes . If anyone is interested please try it out. I tried to promote the site by submitting to HN and did not receive a single vote. I feel that although many people may not be impressed, it is better than 0. So I am just trying to promote it in related threads. Anyway if you ha…

Hi ilaksh, I was able to view your video on an android device. That said, I did have to watch it several times before I understand what was going on because a lot is happening everywhere in the screen. With the video and the minimalist intro on the site, I was still left guessing what was being offered and how it works. Usually before signing up for any website, I want to check out all of the information I can find o…

Btw I dont want to dis on the functionality of the website itself. You have a cool little tool there, and the site is fully functional for friends and family you share it with who know you and what you are working on. The problem and suggestions I am providing are needed if you want to open the horizon to people who arent your friends and family or know what you are working on. All these principles I suggested are basics in the local advertising for yourself. They also aren't going to appeal to everyone because I'm not a professional persuader or contect creator or anything, but my hope is it'll at least transform your website from unapproachable by strangers to approachable by the curious. I cant give real advice for promoting among a target audience

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#74

Post by synu »

x-shadowban wrote: post #70

The anti-singularity, where an AI produces decreasingly correct versions of itself.

The next AIs will be trained on vast swathes of low-quality AI-generated outputs, if they are trained on public data again. Presumably people will have to come up with ways to work around that or the AI will be training to produce outputs like a low quality AI.

By low quality I just mean the state of the outputs today, which are incredible for what they are, but are definitely not the pinnacle of what is in theory possible.

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#76

Post by jlarocco »

Not surprising given the discussion I've seen about these AIs on HN and other sites.

AFAICT, they're generally treated as a shortcut to avoid learning an API or library, or as a shortcut to avoid boilerplate by essentially copying somebody else's boilerplate.

Both cases boil down to using other people's code for purposes that it wasn't built for, which is obviously going to be error prone.

The AI has no idea how this particular case differs from the sample code it was trained on, so it's up to the developer to go back and correct the details - which is precisely what they were trying to avoid with the AI. It's basically a fancy version of code "templates" available in some IDEs, but fewer people know to go back and fill in the correct details.

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#77

Post by bo1024 »

digitalsushi wrote: post #40
lumb63 wrote: post #21

Surprising. If only there were a way that we could have foreseen that an AI trained to write code in part by looking at people who, self-admittedly, don’t know how to write code, and people who write code for others with minimal context (Stack Overflow), would produce buggy code. It is a case of GIGO. Most developers do not learn much from Stack Overflow. Why do we expect AI to fare better? In my experience, one in t…

If I had a little robot riding in the passenger seat that could tell me whether to go left, straight, or right, and it was correct 90% of the time, I'd think that was pretty great. I'd get where I needed to be, even with a couple mishaps. ML code suggestions are the same thing to me. If I don't know where I am going, I can just ask it for suggestions. And it's probably going to be what I want. In both cases, I am ann…

The difference is that with code suggestions, you don't necessarily notice errors, even extremely important errors.

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#78

Post by notpachet »

ilaksh wrote: post #31
notpachet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are users supposed to do when they visit your site? Sign up? There's not enough information there on what to expect from the product for me to want to sign up. You should add more detailed information about what the tool does as enticement to try it.

Were you able to view the video?

Yes, but I wasn't really sure what was going on in it.

Re: Study finds AI assistants help developers produce code likely to be buggy

#79

Post by ilaksh »

eks391 wrote: post #73
eks391 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi ilaksh, I was able to view your video on an android device. That said, I did have to watch it several times before I understand what was going on because a lot is happening everywhere in the screen. With the video and the minimalist intro on the site, I was still left guessing what was being offered and how it works. Usually before signing up for any website, I want to check out all of the information I can find o…

Btw I dont want to dis on the functionality of the website itself. You have a cool little tool there, and the site is fully functional for friends and family you share it with who know you and what you are working on. The problem and suggestions I am providing are needed if you want to open the horizon to people who arent your friends and family or know what you are working on. All these principles I suggested are ba…

Thanks for all of the work and detailed response. I might have been restarting the server right at the moment you tried it. As you can see I released it as soon as I barely got it working, with the minimum explanation and copy etc. There is a bit of explanation in the READ THIS section above the text area. There is a Discord thread in the OpenAI Discord under the api-projects channel but I stopped giving it out because people can't access from the direct channel link and I plan to make a Discord server as soon as possible. I will be working on all of these things as soon as I can get to them. I had mentioned this system in a post in the OpenAI Discord and a few people had said they were waiting for it to be live, so I just got it up. I also have another online business and client project I have to complete to keep the lights on etc. but I am making this new thing as high of a priority as possible.
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