21 comments

  • jasomill30 seconds ago
    This would be more interesting if it were supported by representative examples from Google open source projects.
  • nnf6 hours ago
    One thing that worries me about AI-generated code is that if there's an obscure bug that pops up later, there's no engineer to think "ok hang on, I remember something strange happening when I first wrote that code... let me have a look." Instead, there are only engineers who reviewed the code, which is of course a lot different from writing it.
    • csdreamer75 hours ago
      > One thing that worries me about AI-generated code is that if there's an obscure bug that pops up later, there's no engineer to think "ok hang on, I remember something strange happening when I first wrote that code... let me have a look." Instead, there are only engineers who reviewed the code, which is of course a lot different from writing it.

      I feel this is a very weak argument against AI. Professional software development rarely values crafting good code. You get it in to meet a deadline to make management that is technologically clueless happy. Even orgs that value good code have people leave because of the take a new job merry-go-round to get a good pay raise of years past. One of the reasons open source surpasses most closed source software despite a lack of funding is you a variety of individuals with different goals that are focused on making a maintainable and usable solution.

      • sshine3 hours ago
        > Professional software development rarely values crafting good code. You get it in to meet a deadline to make management that is technologically clueless happy.

        While this is very common, you also have professional software developers with a deep sense of ownership about a system: they animated it, so when it’s being quirky in particular ways, you have an almost supernatural sense of what branches it’s following. You don’t really get to internalise the logic of a program by reading it. It’s a byproduct of having to come up with it. When a part of that thinking is outsourced, some logic internalisation is lost.

    • shepherdjerred5 hours ago
      Engineers in tech move between jobs/teams often enough that this benefit doesn’t exist anyway
    • jerlam5 hours ago
      How common is this situation? While it's nice to look at the history of some line of code and contact the person who wrote it, in a company with a lot of turnover or promotion, that person isn't going to be available or want to help you.
      • nunez1 hour ago
        It's pretty handy if they _are_ there, and/or if they've trained others on the codebase.
  • 000ooo0005 hours ago
    CEO of company with AI product says, in earnings call, that nontrivial amount of code is generated by AI..

    Do people think an earnings call is some kind of secret meeting where the marketing stops?

    • xk_id3 hours ago
      Nearly a quarter of HN submissions lately are just spammy ads for the AI sector. I seldom open them anymore, but I’ve noticed most of them get hundreds of comments. I wish people spent their time on something useful.
      • sshine3 hours ago
        At least people are not openly hostile to the hype train like with blockchain.
  • Animats5 hours ago
    Any good examples of such generated code? Anything to look at on Github, Gitlab, etc?
    • 000ooo0005 hours ago
      80 lines of licence comment

      30 lines of class boilerplate

      One explanatory comment for every statement

      The revolution is here!

  • burnt-resistor1 hour ago
    It sounds like a boastful lie for stock reasons, but if not, the AI overlords may decide to write algorithms creating effectively a social credit service and not tell any humans.
  • gnabgib4 hours ago
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  • mysterydip5 hours ago
    Because saying "more than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by free crowdsourcing from internet scraping" doesn't roll off the tongue as easily ;)
    • johnasmith5 hours ago
      Google has two billion lines of proprietary code, conformant to their style guides and proprietary requirements. I can't imagine they'd poison their model with non-conformant third party source.
  • uberman5 hours ago
    With so many projects abandoned, is code speed really an issue for google?

    Has there been any novel or interesting code written or is this code block completion that saved people keystrokes?

    • burnt-resistor1 hour ago
      Like most inherently greedy corporations these days, they're figure out yet another way to demoralize, fire, and drive away talented engineers.

      It could also be they're using AI to propose and do large-scale refactor code mods, but that would be a smart use-case for it.

  • babyent5 hours ago
    What kind of code? That’s pretty important to know right?
  • AStonesThrow51 minutes ago
    When function names autocomplete in my IDE, is AI writing my code?

    When vim shows me where a matching paren/bracket goes, is that AI that put them there?

    When we use code validators like lint or Purify, is that AI code review from the 1980s?

  • null_deref5 hours ago
    More than a quarter of the new code is generated by AI while I need to clarify each time with my PM what does the ticket they opened mean
  • sys_647383 hours ago
    Mission critical code? Unit tests? Context matters.
  • add-sub-mul-div5 hours ago
    AI code is the new offshore code. Have fun maintaining it.
  • jesse__6 hours ago
    RIP Google
    • unsnap_biceps5 hours ago
      Eh, I would imagine that more than a quarter of new code at any FAANG is boilerplate which is ideal for current AI systems. I'm pretty anti-current-AI, but I can't say that I'm not impressed at how well it handles boilerplate code.
  • ivewonyoung4 hours ago
    Are they using models that are public, or are these customized private models.
  • drewcoo4 hours ago
    Google is a big company which buys other companies to grow.

    Does this AI actually improve their M&A somehow? Does it allow them to AI-write new software instead of buying it?

    I don't get it.

    • jsnell1 hour ago
      Your entire premise is pretty obviously wrong. Acquisitions are not the main driver for any kind of growth, whether revenue or the code base
  • asdfasdf13 hours ago
    and it shows
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  • twp5 hours ago
    [flagged]
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      undefined