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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

#981

Post by mdavid626 »

tguinot wrote: post #964
mdavid626 wrote: post #959

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the time saving time is just an illusion. When that code will needed to be changed, people will spend more than 4 days debugging and understanding it. The mental model of it was written by AI. It can make sense or not at all. You’ll figure it out after 4 days.

The code is 2 files of 80 lines each and is very clear. There's no way any software developer needs 4 days to understand what it does. Moreover Claude can explain the functions used very clearly (if you're too lazy to jump to definition in your editor) LLMs are becoming actually useful to developers new to a language. Just as Google was 20 years ago.

People talk about completey different things. The article was about Google using LLM-s to generate code, not people making 80 lines with them at home. There is a huge difference. I don’t see any problem with the latter, but with the former there are many problems.

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

#982

Post by IAmGraydon »

wayoverthecloud wrote: post #383
game_the0ry wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not so sure nowadays. Given how often big tech lays off employees and the abundance of recently laid off tech talent, trying to start your own company sounds a lot more appealing than ever. I consider myself risk-averse and even I am contemplating starting a small business in the event I get laid off.

Interesting. I think the same thing but I wonder if the market is not ready for products created by the big guys, what can I offer? Have you thought in that line?

You’re thinking about it wrong. Most large companies won’t put development time into an idea that would only make them $1-5M per year. On the other hand, $1-5M per year is great money to an individual. So there’s a lot of untouched markets that can make you rich but just don’t interest the big guys.

All of that said, there are a lot of products that are produced by large companies and are just bad. Don’t be afraid to go after a Goliath if you see an opportunity.

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

#983

Post by Capricorn2481 »

AI_beffr wrote: post #980
Capricorn2481 wrote: post #962

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think when people say AI can only write trivial code that they are writing from the perspective of AI, where trivial is actually impressive? That's is backward ass logic.

no im saying they are anthropomorphizing the capabilities of these AIs which disguises how advanced they really are.

Not really what you said. In any case, people aren't doing that, they are just pointing out that AI writes poor code beyond very basic things. That's not Anthropomorphizing.

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

#984

Post by xp84 »

nlehuen wrote: post #660
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 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…

I frequently use copilot and also find that writing comments like you do, to describe what I expect each function/class/etc to do gives superb results, and usually eliminates most of the actual coding work. Obviously it adds significant specification work but that’s not usually a bad thing.

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

#985

Post by xp84 »

twoWhlsGud wrote: post #885
Aachen wrote: post #861

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because I do security audits Functional bugs in edge cases are annoying enough, and I seem to run into these regularly as a user, but there's yet another class of people creating edge cases for their own purposes. The nonchalant "if it doesn't work"... I don't know whether that confirms my suspicion that not all developers are aware of (as a first step; let alone control for) the risks

And especially if it generates bugs in ways different from humans - human review might be less effective at catching it...

It generates bugs in pretty similar ways. It’s based on human-written code, after all.

Edge cases will usually be the ones to get through. Most developers don’t correctly write tests that exercise the limits of each input (or indeed have time to both unit test every function that way, and integration test to be sure the bigger stories are correctly working). Nothing about ai assist changes any of this.

(If anybody starts doing significant fully unsupervised “ai” coding they would likely pay the price in extreme instability so I’m assuming here that humans still basically read/skim PRs the same as they always have)

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

#986

Post by NotAnOtter »

wcoenen wrote: post #884
NotAnOtter wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also work at google (until last Friday). Agree with what you said. My thoughts are 1. This quote is clearly meant to exaggerate reality, and they are likely including things like fully automated CL/PR's which have been around for a decade as "AI generated". 2. I stated before that if a team of 10 is equally as productive as a team of 8 utilizing things like copilot, it's fair to say "AI replaced 2 engineers", in my…

> including things like fully automated CL/PR's which have been around for a decade I haven't seen this yet so I'm intrigued. Is this a commercial product, or internal tooling?

It's common at most mega-corps like google. For example, if a utility function in an internal library was deprecated and replaced with a different function that has the same functionality. A team might write a script which generates hundreds/thousands of PR's to make the migration to the new function.

You don't want a single PR that does that, because that would affect thousands of projects, and if something goes wrong with a single one, the whole PR needs to be rolled back.

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

#987

Post by AI_beffr »

Capricorn2481 wrote: post #983
AI_beffr wrote: post #980

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no im saying they are anthropomorphizing the capabilities of these AIs which disguises how advanced they really are.

Not really what you said. In any case, people aren't doing that, they are just pointing out that AI writes poor code beyond very basic things. That's not Anthropomorphizing.

it is what i said exactly and they are doing it.

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

#988

Post by alsetmusic »

pjmlp wrote: post #878
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.

No one cares about self checkout on supermarkets impact on their employees, until their employer does something similar.

I care as a consumer who hates standing in long lines. My former bank branch had thirteen teller stations and two tellers. This wasn't on a bad day. This was for years.

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

#989

Post by [deleted] »

nlehuen wrote: post #660
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 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…

[deleted]
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