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Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

businessinsider.com

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Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#481

Post by Kalabasa »

creativenolo wrote: post #331
AlwaysRock wrote: post #139

If we are talking about the boilerplate code and autofill syntax code that copilot or any other "AI" will offer me when I start typing... Then sure. Sounds about right. The other 75% is the stuff you actually have to think about. This feels like saying linters impact x0% of code. This just feels like an extension of that.

It probably does. But an amazing number of commenters think they are prompting the copy & pasting, and hoping for the best.

Yep, a lot of headline readers here.

It's just a very advanced autocomplete, completely integrated into the internal codebase and IDE. You can read this on the research blog (maybe if everyone just read the blog).

e.g.

I start typing `var notificationManager`

It would suggest `= (Notification Manager) context.getSystemService(NOTIFICATION_MANAGER);`

If you've done Android then you know how much boilerplate there is to suggest.

I press Ctrl+Enter or something to accept the suggestion.

Voila, more than 50% of that code was written by AI.

> blindly committing AI code

Even before AI, no one blindly accepts autocomplete.

A lot of headline-readers seem to imagine some sort of semi-autonomous or prompt based code generation that writes whole blocks of code to then be blindly accepted by engineers.

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#482

Post by kenjackson »

justinpombrio wrote: post #256
Twirrim wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We work very closely with Google DeepMind to adapt Gemini models for Google-scale coding and other Software Engineering usecases. Considering how terrible and frequently broken the code that the public facing Gemini produces, I'll have to be honest that that kind of scares me. Gemini frequently fails at some fairly basic stuff, even in popular languages where it would have had a lot of source material to work from;…

> Can you spot all the problems? You were probably being rhetorical, but there are two problems: - `p = 2` should be outside the loop - `prime_factors.append(n)` appends `1` onto the end of the list for no reason With those two changes I'm pretty sure it's correct.

You don't need to append 'p' in the inner while loop more than once. Maybe instead of an array for keeping the list of prime factors do it in a set.

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#483

Post by johnnyanmac »

palata wrote: post #346
fuzzy2 wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll just answer here, but this isn't about this post in particular. It's about all of them. I've been struggling with a team of junior devs for the past months. How would I describe the experience? It's easy: just take any of these posts, replace "AI" with "junior dev", done. Except of course AI at least can do spelling. (Or at least I haven't encountered a problem in that regard.) I'm highly skeptical regarding LLM…

Isn't the whole point of hiring a junior dev that they will learn and become senior devs eventually?

Your mindset is sadly a decade put of touch. Companies long since shifted to churn mentality. They not only slashed retention perks, they actively expect people to move around every few years. So they don't bother stopping them or counter offering unless they are a truly exceptional person.

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#484

Post by throwaway106382 »

philipwhiuk wrote: post #445
throwaway106382 wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IDEs have been auto completing braces, inserting imports and generating framework boilerplate for decades. We don’t need AI for this and it’s 10x the compute to do it slower with AI. LLMs are useful but they aren’t a silver bullet. We don’t need to replace everything with it just because.

Yeah, but the management achievement is to call 'autocomplete' AI. AI doesn't mean LLM after all. AI means 'a computer thing'.

I’ve been calling if-statements AI since before I graduated college

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#485

Post by wpietri »

jcgrillo wrote: post #431
jihadjihad wrote: post #393

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The problem is finding people to do it with who care enough to think rigorously > ... > train them, and reject low quality work. I agree very strongly with both of these points. But I've observed a truth about each of them over the last decade-plus of building software. 1) very few people approach the field of software engineering with anything remotely resembling rigor, and 2) there is often little incentive to tr…

> 1) very few people approach the field of software engineering with anything remotely resembling rigor This is a huge problem. I don't know where it comes from, I think maybe sort of learned helplessness? Like, if systems are so complex that you don't believe a single person can understand it then why bother trying anyway? I think it's possible to inspire people to not accept not understanding. That motivation to fi…

> This is a huge problem. I don't know where it comes from

I think it's a bunch of things, but one legitimate issue is that software is stupidly complex these days. I had the advantage of starting when computers were pretty simple and have had a chance to grow along with it. (And my dad started when you could still lift up the hood and look at each bit. [1])

When I'm working with junior engineers I have a hard time even summing up how many layers lie beneath what they're working on. And so much of what they have to know is historically contingent. Just the other day I had to explain what LF and CR mean and how it relates to physical machinery that they probably won't see outside of a museum: https://sfba.social/@williampietri/113387049693365012

So I get how junior engineers struggle to develop a belief that the can sort it all out. Especially when so many people end up working on garbage code, where little sense is to be had. It's no wonder so many turn to cargo culting and other superstitious rituals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#486

Post by uh_uh »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #479
uh_uh wrote: post #462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They don't have high status even today Try putting on a dating website that you work at Google vs you work in agriculture and tell us which yielded more dates.

Does it matter? I imagine the tanned shirtless farmer would get more hits than the pasty million dollar salary Googler anyway. (no offense to Googleers). With so many hits, it's about hitting all the checkmarks instead of minmaxing on one check.

You can't just arbitrarily change (confounding) variables like that for a proper experiment. All other factors (including physique) must remain the same while you change one thing only: occupation.

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#487

Post by johnnyanmac »

llm_trw wrote: post #444
skrebbel wrote: post #127

To my experience, AIs can generate perfectly good code relatively easy things, the kind you might as well copy&paste from stackoverflow, and they'll very confidently generate subtly wrong code for anything that's non-trivial for an experienced programmer to write. How do people deal with this? I simply don't understand the value proposition. Does Google now have 25% subtly wrong code? Or do they have 25% trivial code…

Or alternatively you don't know how to use AI to help you code and are in the 2020s equivalent of the 'Why do I need google when I have the yellow pages?' phase a lot of adults went through in the 2000s. This is not a bad thing since you can improve, but constantly dismissing something that a lot of people are finding an amazing productivity boost should give you some pause.

It's like blockchain right now. I'm sure there is some killer feature that can justify its problem space.

But as of now the field is full of swamps. Of grifters, of people with a solution looking for a problem. Of outright scams of questionable legality being challenged as we speak.

I'll wait until the swamps work itself out before evaluating an LLM workflow.

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#488

Post by neaanopri »

deely3 wrote: post #109
ozim wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can - but not on the level of a single developer and you cannot use those measures to manage productivity of a specific dev. For teams you can measure meaningful outcomes and improve team metrics. You shouldn’t really compare teams but it also is possible if you know what teams are doing. If you are some disconnected manager that thinks he can make decisions or improvements reducing things to single numbers - yea…

> For teams you can measure meaningful outcomes and improve team metrics. How? Which metrics?

There's only one metric that matters at the end of the day, and that's $. Revenue.

Unfortunately there's a lot of lag

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#489

Post by rh2323o4jl234 »

skrebbel wrote: post #127

To my experience, AIs can generate perfectly good code relatively easy things, the kind you might as well copy&paste from stackoverflow, and they'll very confidently generate subtly wrong code for anything that's non-trivial for an experienced programmer to write. How do people deal with this? I simply don't understand the value proposition. Does Google now have 25% subtly wrong code? Or do they have 25% trivial code…

> Does Google now have 25% subtly wrong code?

I think you underestimate the amount of boiler-plate code that a typical job at Google requires. I found it soul-crushingly boring (though their pay is insane).

Re: Google CEO says more than a quarter of the company's new code is created by AI

#490

Post by johnnyanmac »

uh_uh wrote: post #486
johnnyanmac wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it matter? I imagine the tanned shirtless farmer would get more hits than the pasty million dollar salary Googler anyway. (no offense to Googleers). With so many hits, it's about hitting all the checkmarks instead of minmaxing on one check.

You can't just arbitrarily change (confounding) variables like that for a proper experiment. All other factors (including physique) must remain the same while you change one thing only: occupation.

"confounding" implies occupancy doesn't influce other factors of your life. I'm sure everyone wants the supermodel millionaire genius who's perfectly in touch with the feelings of their parter. If that was the norm then sure, farmers would be in trouble.

My comment was more a critique on online dating culture and the values it weighs compared to in person meetups.

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