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Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

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Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#81

Post by jameshart »

vkou wrote: post #70
jameshart wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a clear separation between the training process which looks at code and outputs nothing but weights, and the generation process which takes in weights and prompts and produces code. The weights are an intermediate representation that contains nothing resembling the original code.

The neurons in my brain when I plagiarize are just arrangements of atoms that contain nothing that resembles orginal code/text passages/etc.

The trained weights of a GPT model are a frozen, static, transmissible representation. They’re not equivalent to the live state of a brain.

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#82

Post by lolinder »

simonw wrote: post #72
endisneigh wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. It’s funny reading comments on here. Even gpt4 I think is just ok. Maybe the people who see these huge increases are more junior?

I'm definitely not more junior, and I'm seeing massive productivity improvement from Copilot and GPT-4 - but I'm finding it takes a lot of expertise to get the best results, both in my ability as a programmer and in terms of knowing the best ways to use the AI tools. Learning how to get the best results of them takes a great deal of experimentation.

This has been my experience as well. I actually avoid recommending Copilot to juniors because I think using it requires a deeper understanding of what you're trying to do than is required to just write the code by hand. When you have that understanding it can be a huge time saver, but it's not something you can just pick up and magically ask to solve your problems for you.

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#83

Post by lolinder »

john_cogs wrote: post #75
curtis3389 wrote: post #50

Okay, but how much are they charging? It's getting really annoying how many sites force you into a trial just to find out how much it'll cost when it ends. EDIT: Is this even positioned to compete with Copilot? What editors are there plugins for? There is surprisingly little information on the site.

Code Suggestions can be used in GitLab's Web IDE and VS Code and Microsoft Visual Studio when you have the corresponding GitLab extension installed: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/repository/code_sugg... We offer experimental support for additional editors: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/repository/code_sugg...

That doesn't answer the question of what the pricing will be. I'm assuming it's not going to be free. Will it be a standalone subscription, or another thing that gets bundled into the main tiers to justify the ever-increasing prices?

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#84

Post by gavinray »

phil917 wrote: post #46

I just canceled my Copilot subscription last night. I definitely never saw the productivity boost that I’ve seen so many claim. I actually feel like the suggestions seemed to get worse during my month of using it for some reason. Towards the end, it started suggesting these large blocks of code (another issue I had with the interface as well) which were very not relevant to what I was attempting to write. All in all,…

To offer a counter opinion: while I can live without ChatGPT and cancelled my OpenAI plus membership, I cannot live without Copilot and would be willing to pay a lot to keep it.

There are a lot of tricks to optimizing output from Copilot ("Copilot-Driven Development"), I wrote a little about what I've discovered here:

https://gavinray97.github.io/blog/a-day-without-a-copilot#co...

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#85

Post by lostmsu »

phil917 wrote: post #46

I just canceled my Copilot subscription last night. I definitely never saw the productivity boost that I’ve seen so many claim. I actually feel like the suggestions seemed to get worse during my month of using it for some reason. Towards the end, it started suggesting these large blocks of code (another issue I had with the interface as well) which were very not relevant to what I was attempting to write. All in all,…

Just today Copilot saved me close to 1 hour of typing and replaced it essentially with ~1 minute of pressing Tab.

I was hooking IAudioClient COM class to capture and silence arbitrary app's audio, and as soon as I wrote signatures for its members Copilot was able to generate skeletal stub implementation with logging as well as hooking code totaling about 150 lines of Rust.

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#86

Post by throwaway38249 »

jameshart wrote: post #78
cj wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has anyone been able to create a prompt that GPT4 replies to with copyrighted content (or content extremely similar to the original content)? I'm curious how easy or difficult it is to get GPT to spit out content (code or text) that could be considered obvious infringement. Tempted to give it half of some closed-source or restrictive licensed code to see if it auto-completes the other half in a manner that is obvious…

I can reproduce when prompted all the lyrics to Bohemian Rhapsody, but my doing so isn’t automatically copyright infringement. It would depend on where, when, how, in front of what audience, and to what purpose I was reciting them as to whether it was irrelevant to copyright law, protected under some copyright use case, civilly infringing, or criminally infringing copyright abuse. The same applies to GPT. It could re…

OK, it can exist without breaking any laws, but if you can't release anything it helps you write, what's the point?

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#88

Post by SparkyMcUnicorn »

simonw wrote: post #69
phil917 wrote: post #46

I just canceled my Copilot subscription last night. I definitely never saw the productivity boost that I’ve seen so many claim. I actually feel like the suggestions seemed to get worse during my month of using it for some reason. Towards the end, it started suggesting these large blocks of code (another issue I had with the interface as well) which were very not relevant to what I was attempting to write. All in all,…

Did you change the way you worked to help facilitate it at all? I get great results from Copilot, but that's because I do a bunch of things to help it work for me. One example: I'll often paste in a big chunk of text - the class definition for an ORM model for example - then use Copilot to write code that uses that class, then delete the code I pasted in again later. Or I'll add a few lines of comments describing wha…

Using Copilot has taught me how to write better code comments. And the improved comment quality benefits everyone, not just the AI.

Even something as simple as adding a doc block for a method can boost the quality quite a bit.

I could live without it, but I'd also keep paying if the price increased.

Re: Gitlab’s AI-assisted code suggestions

#90

Post by ipaddr »

Spivak wrote: post #43
johndough wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GitHub Copilot copying Quake's fast inverse square root function is a famous example where Copilot copied GPL-licensed code only given the comment // fast inverse square root https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27710287

I mean if you ask the tool to produce a specific algorithm by it's very famous name then that's on you. If you ask DALL-E to draw Pikachu you can't be suprised Pikachu when it's a copyright violation.

You can't play both sides. If you ask it for something with a copyright and it gives it to you, it has broken the law governing this. Ask it for underage porn and it gives it to you.. it broke the law.
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