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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

#921

Post by svieira »

zac23or wrote: post #871
reverius42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the most interesting part of this is the claim that you can accurately and meaningfully measure software engineering productivity.

I knew a superstar developer who worked on reports in an SQL tool. In the company metrics, the developer scored 420 points per month, the second developer scored 60 points. “Please learn how to score more points from the leader”, the boss would say. The superstar developer’s secret… he would send blank reports to clients (who would only realize it days later, and someone else would end up redoing the report), and he…

> When people are pressured to meet a target value there are three ways they can proceed:

1) They can work to improve the system

2) They can distort the system

3) Or they can distort the data

https://commoncog.com/goodharts-law-not-useful/

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

#922

Post by segasaturn »

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…

How do you square this comment with the one right below it[1], which explicitly confirms the statement that Google is using GenAI via Gemini to write code? Lots of mixed signals coming from the Googlers here.

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41992028

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

#923

Post by flessner »

erlend_sh wrote: post #918

Self-interested hyperbole aside, I think that’s a laughably low number for what is now effectively an ‘AI Company’. I’m sure >95% of Google employees use Google (well, at least until recent years). If this stuff really works as well as these companies claim it does, wouldn’t their entire workforce excitedly be using these tools already?

"AI generated code" essentially means using Github Copilot or an alternative - these barely write a function without errors, nor are they even close to implementing a new feature autonomously.

I expect these tools to improve productivity for new-ish developers, however for anyone that is literate in a programming language the effect is marginal at best ("Copilot pause" etc.)

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

#924

Post by torginus »

zac23or wrote: post #871
reverius42 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To me the most interesting part of this is the claim that you can accurately and meaningfully measure software engineering productivity.

I knew a superstar developer who worked on reports in an SQL tool. In the company metrics, the developer scored 420 points per month, the second developer scored 60 points. “Please learn how to score more points from the leader”, the boss would say. The superstar developer’s secret… he would send blank reports to clients (who would only realize it days later, and someone else would end up redoing the report), and he…

Honestly I doubt he got away with this for long (unless it was a very dysfunctional org). Being the best gets you noticed (in a good way), and screwing people over gets you noticed too (in a bad way), the combination of the two paints a target on your back.

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

#925

Post by burningChrome »

rty32 wrote: post #787
ahmedfromtunis wrote: post #705

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. In today's social climate claiming to replace humans with AI would attract the wrong kind of attention from politicians (during an election year) and from the public in general. This would be even more unwise to admit for a company like Google who's an "AI producer".…

> I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. Depends on who you ask. If Trump wins and Elon Musk actually gets a new job, they would be bragging about replacing humans with AI all day long. And corporates are going to love it. Not sure about what voters think though. But the fact that most of these companies are in California, New York etc means that it barely matters.

>> they would be bragging about replacing humans with AI all day long.

Has either bragged about this at all?

The only thing I've heard floated is Musk running a "government efficiency commission" which I just assumed meant he would be looking for ways to gut a lot of the never ending, never dying government programs. I've never heard him saying the commissions goal was to replace people with AI.

https://www.newsnationnow.com/politics/2024-election/trump-m...

The former president said such an audit would be to combat waste and fraud and suggested it could save trillions for the economy.

As the first order of business, Trump said that this commission will develop an action plan to eliminate fraud and improper payments within six months.

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

#926

Post by sfink »

petre wrote: post #893
rty32 wrote: post #787

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. Depends on who you ask. If Trump wins and Elon Musk actually gets a new job, they would be bragging about replacing humans with AI all day long. And corporates are going to love it. Not sure about what voters think though. But the fact that most of these companies are in California, New York etc means that it barely matters.

Yup, just like full self driving and ending the war in Ukraine on 24 hours.

I find the boast about ending the war to be reasonably likely -- if it is clear the US is switching sides in the conflict, a negotiated capitulation could happen pretty quickly.

In a similar vein, solving world hunger is closer today than it's ever been. The previous best hope was global thermonuclear war, but honestly that would leave enough survivors as to be mostly ineffective, and much more likely to have the opposite result. Severe climate change has a better shot at fully eliminating [human] hunger.

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

#927

Post by peepee1982 »

inanepenguin wrote: post #917
peepee1982 wrote: post #915

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what I thought. In recent weeks, most of the code I’ve written has been AI-generated. But it was mostly JSDoc comments, type checking (I'm writing JavaScript), abstracting code if I see that I'm repeating myself a little too often, etc. All things that I would consider tedious housekeeping, but nothing that needs serious reasoning. It's basically a glorified LSP.

I know you're not saying anything revolutionary but this is the best succinct yet fair description of these tools that I've seen. They're not worthless but they're not job destroying.

You're right, it's not revolutionary at all. But I'm glad you liked my summary!

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

#928

Post by zh3 »

d_burfoot wrote: post #798

I'd be far more impressed if the CEO said "The AI deleted a quarter of our company's code".

Yes, like the old story about why not to measure productivity by LoC generated.

https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html

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

#929

Post by GeoAtreides »

torginus wrote: post #924
zac23or wrote: post #871

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I knew a superstar developer who worked on reports in an SQL tool. In the company metrics, the developer scored 420 points per month, the second developer scored 60 points. “Please learn how to score more points from the leader”, the boss would say. The superstar developer’s secret… he would send blank reports to clients (who would only realize it days later, and someone else would end up redoing the report), and he…

Honestly I doubt he got away with this for long (unless it was a very dysfunctional org). Being the best gets you noticed (in a good way), and screwing people over gets you noticed too (in a bad way), the combination of the two paints a target on your back.

> Being the best gets you noticed (in a good way), and screwing people over gets you noticed too (in a bad way),

ah, to be young again...

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

#930

Post by awkward »

blindhippo wrote: post #865
awkward wrote: post #860

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same things I use it for as well - crap like "update this class to use JDK21" or "re-implement this client to use AWS SDKv2" or whatever. And it works maybe... 80% of the way and I spend all my time fixing the remaining 20%. Anecdotally I don't "feel" like this really accelerates me or reduces the time it would take me to do the change if I just implemented the translation manually.

Amazon is publicly claiming that they have saved hundreds of millions on jvm upgrades using AI, so while it feels trivial - because before that work would end up in the "just don't do it" pile - it's a relevant use case.
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