AI can code – but is it better than humans?

The AI race is in full swing, with tech companies in a race to develop the most useful and marketable AI tools that they can. Not only can some of these tools create a never-before-seen image or write up a decent cover letter, but they can also generate usable code.

Back in March, ​​Google’s parent company, Alphabet, made a deal to provide AI to startup Replit, a web-based coding tool with over 20 million users. This AI helper tool will be used in Replit to recommend code and answer coding questions. Other companies, like Microsoft and GitHub, are already using AI to assist coders.  Meta has its own AI coding tool in the pipeline, and Amazon has developed its own tool, also.

Over at Amazon, the CodeWhisperer AI coding assistant is currently free for developers to use, and Microsoft’s version is US$10 a month. These tools can be used to generate lines of code from text prompts. It can also find potential vulnerabilities in existing code.

Adam Hughes, a software developer, tested ChatGPT’s code-writing abilities and was impressed. He said to Insider, “I never thought I would be replaced in my job, ever, until ChatGPT. I had an existential crisis right then and there. A lot of the knowledge that I thought was special to me, that I had put seven years into, just became obsolete."

While there’s been a lot of talk about AI coming for other white-collar jobs, the idea that it might be a danger to coders themselves has some people concerned.

But software development jobs aren’t necessarily in danger here.

Anthony Hughes, cofounder and CEO of Tech Elevator, writes for Forbes, “At its core, software development isn’t solely about writing lines of code—it’s about solving problems, and as technology use cases continue to expand as more business opportunities emerge, software developers will be needed more than ever to build the solutions.”