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

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

#851

Post by caeril » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:19 PM UTC

Aachen wrote: post #704

nlehuen wrote: post #660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also work at Google and I agree with the general sentiment that AI completion is not doing engineering per se, simply because writing code is just a small part of engineering. However in my experience the system is much more powerful than you described. Maybe this is because I'm mostly writing C++ for which there is a much bigger training corpus than JavaScript. One thing the system is already pretty good at is wri…

This type of not having to think about the implementation, especially in a language that we've by now well-established can't be written safely by humans (including by Google's own research into Android vulnerabilities if I'm not mistaken), at least with the current level of LLM, worries me the most Time will tell whether it outputs worse, equal, or better quality than skilled humans, but I'd be very wary of anything…

It's worrying, yes, but we've had stackoverflow copy-paste coding for over a decade now already, which has exactly the same effects.

This isn't a new concern. Thoughtless software development started a long time ago.

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

#852

Post by darth_avocado » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:21 PM UTC

ytss wrote: post #750

whywhywhywhy wrote: post #741

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and from the public in general Don't think the public will be that concerned about people in Google's salary bracket losing their jobs.

The public might though be concerned that if they are being replaced, many in other positions at other companies will soon be replaced as well.

That’s not how the mind works. People cheered when Elon fired 80% of the Twitter staff. No one cares when people with high paying jobs suffer.

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

#853

Post by theodric » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:23 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #398

I work for Google, and I just got done with my work day. I was just writing I guess what you'd call "AI generated code." But the code completion engine is basically just good at finishing the lines I'm writing. If I'm writing "function getAc..." it's smart enough to complete to "function getActionHandler()", and maybe suggest the correct arguments and a decent jsdoc comment. So basically, it's a helpful productivity…

I wonder how this works with IP rights in the USA. Like, is `function getAc` eligible for copyright protection, but `tionHandler()` isn't? After all, [1]

[1] https://www.reuters.com/legal/ai-generated-art-cannot-receiv...

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

#854

Post by busterarm » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:27 PM UTC

walthamstow wrote: post #836

busterarm wrote: post #819

Earlier quoted context omitted.

glorified, EXPENSIVE tab completion.

I assume you're referring to the compute/energy used to run the completion?

to train the model

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

#855

Post by tessierashpool » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:29 PM UTC

protomolecule wrote: post #783

lupire wrote: post #740

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(No need to Orientalize to defamiarize, especially when a huge fraction of the audience is Chinese, so Orientalizing doesn't defamiliarize. Game of Whispers or Telephone works fine.)

Do the Chinese call it English Whispers?

Chinese-Americans, at least, call it a game of Telephone, like everyone else in the English-speaking world except for the actual English.

We call it “Telephone” because “Chinese Whispers” not only sounds racist, it is also super confusing. You need a lot of cultural context to understand the particular way in which Chinese whispers would be different from any other set of whispers.

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

#856

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:39 PM UTC

lenerdenator wrote: post #812

tjahg wrote: post #800

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

That would be the way someone with no real awareness of the philosophies and realities of the two parties in the US would see it. And to be fair, that's a good description of a large chunk of the American electorate. But you can't have a guy who literally used to relieve himself into a golden toilet take over your party and be anything but the party of big business and billionaires.

[deleted]

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

#857

Post by vundercind » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:39 PM UTC

rustcleaner wrote: post #545

ghostpepper wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does it make you 25% more productive?

If 25% of code was AI-written, wouldn't it be a 33[.333...]% increase in productivity?

Who spends 100% of their time actually typing code?

It’s probably closer to 10% than 100%, especially at big companies.

One thing I would love to see is reports of benefits from various tools coming with one’s typing ability in WPM. I’d also like to see that on posts where people express a preference for “a quick call” or stopping by your desk rather than posting what they want in chat. I have some hypotheses I’d like to test out.

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

#858

Post by Capricorn2481 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:40 PM UTC

macintux wrote: post #202

taeric wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the documentation is out of date, such that it doesn't help, this doesn't bode well for the training data of the AI helping it get it right, either?

AI can presumably integrate all of the forum discussions talking about how people really use the code. Assuming discussions don't happen in Slack, or Discord, or...

Forum posts can also be out of date.

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

#859

Post by Capricorn2481 » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:46 PM UTC

anthonyskipper wrote: post #119

deely3 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

My company uses the Dora metrics to measure the productivity of teams and those metrics are incredibly good.

These are awesome, but feel more applicable to DevOps than anything else. Development can certainly affect these metrics, but assuming your code doesn't introduce a huge bug that crashes the server, this is mostly for people deploying apps.

I think it's harder to measure things like developer productivity. The closest thing we have is making an estimate and seeing how far off you are, but that doesn't account for hedging estimates or requirements suddenly changing. Changing requirements doesn't matter for DORA as it's just another sample to test for deployment.

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

#860

Post by awkward » Thu, Oct 31, 2024, 3:48 PM UTC

asdfman123 wrote: post #398

I work for Google, and I just got done with my work day. I was just writing I guess what you'd call "AI generated code." But the code completion engine is basically just good at finishing the lines I'm writing. If I'm writing "function getAc..." it's smart enough to complete to "function getActionHandler()", and maybe suggest the correct arguments and a decent jsdoc comment. So basically, it's a helpful productivity…

Stuff that works well with AI seems to correlate pretty well with high churn changes. I've had good luck using AI to port large numbers of features from version A to version B, or getting code with a a lot of dependencies under mocked unit tests.

It's easy to see that adding up quickly to represent large percentages of the codebase by line, but it's not feature development or solving hard problems.