Microsoft Uses GPT-3 To Let You Code in Natural Language (techcrunch.com) 37
Microsoft is now using OpenAI's massive GPT-3 natural language model in its no-code/low-code Power Apps service to translate spoken text into code in its recently announced Power Fx language. From a report: Now don't get carried away. You're not going to develop the next TikTok while only using natural language. Instead, what Microsoft is doing here is taking some of the low-code aspects of a tool like Power Apps and using AI to essentially turn those into no-code experiences, too. For now, the focus here is on Power Apps formulas, which despite the low-code nature of the service, is something you'll have to write sooner or later if you want to build an app of any sophistication.
"Using an advanced AI model like this can help our low-code tools become even more widely available to an even bigger audience by truly becoming what we call no code," said Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president for Microsoft's low-code application platform. In practice, this looks like the citizen programmer writing "find products where the name starts with 'kids'" -- and Power Apps then rendering that as "Filter('BC Orders' Left('Product Name',4)="Kids")". Because Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI, it's no surprise the company chose its model to power this experience.
"Using an advanced AI model like this can help our low-code tools become even more widely available to an even bigger audience by truly becoming what we call no code," said Charles Lamanna, corporate vice president for Microsoft's low-code application platform. In practice, this looks like the citizen programmer writing "find products where the name starts with 'kids'" -- and Power Apps then rendering that as "Filter('BC Orders' Left('Product Name',4)="Kids")". Because Microsoft is an investor in OpenAI, it's no surprise the company chose its model to power this experience.
No... it lets you QUERY in natural language (Score:3)
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The real question is whether this works better than existing technology (or worse, since the examples we've seen so far had syntax errors).
If it is not significantly better than existing technology, then it's a toy.
Programming without debug ability (Score:5, Insightful)
If you cannot code, you probably cannot debug either. Even in the example above, say the Filter function turs out to be case sensitive and/or the BC Order starts with a space of some other ASCII character. Whoever wrote this by telling the computer "find products where the name starts with 'kids'" will likely have no clue why only some portion of the orders are found, and how to debug why some (like orders staring with lower case "kids", or "KIDS" or "Kid's" or "*Kids", etc) are not found, because they don't understand programming.
Re: Programming without debug ability (Score:1)
I think we already saw that.
Anyone remember "Object not found" from IE6 times? ;)
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I'm not familiar with Power Apps, but I feel like this could teach me to use it a little more effectively pretty quickly.
It wouldn't take long to get the concept of what was possible, and the syntax looks easy to read and look over. It'd be more of a syntax learning tool than a no code solution for me, but it looks effective for a simple use case. Could probably be useful in Excel. Something like this cell equals that cell from "abc" to "123" to clip out part of a cell would be quicker than me looking up th
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Excellent point. Since 80% (or so) of coding is debugging, you cannot code with this thing in the first place. You can only kid yourself that you are coding.
Can it do even slightly harder? (Score:2)
Have fun with your ambiguities! (Score:1)
We invented formal programming languages for a reason.
Especially English is very prone to ambiguities, due to its lack of compound words.
And I wonder how you will parse the stress implied merely by a certain word order in a sentence. ^^
Now go help your uncle Jack off a horse.
GPT (Score:2)
So they are using GUID Partition Table for that?
Sorry, but I'm not installing this software on my computer any time soon. I don't want it to alter my partition table.
Another Effort to Trivialize Computer Programming (Score:2)
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Hint, it's not.
But you can make it even harder to see that and make people fuck up worse before they notice. This seems to be an effort in that direction.
Re: They are chasing demos (Score:2)
This is the demo they are trying to make into an actual product [twitter.com]. It looks impressive.
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I can see real use in that for quick prototyping of an interface... or letting my boss prototype an interface, which sounds absolutely amazing for me, because my AI that tries to turn his "natural" language into a real interface burns a lot of its sanity trying to do so.
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Now, don't get me wrong- I'm not impressed by what he created right there. I'm impressed with how it was created.
The language-parsing functionality is obviously sound. I can't think of any reason why it can't be trained to work with more complex scenarios.
I definitely look forward to seeing something complex made with it.
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In other demos it didn't even output syntactically correct output.
Error handling ? (Score:3)
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User error: strike user to continue
We need more of that!
Wasn't this the idea behind ... (Score:2)
Instructions in plain English, that the accountants and lawyers can understand what the computer is doing so that they can be certain there is no one stealing fractions of pennies ....
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COBOL
And COBOL was extremely successful, at the point where even now, more than 60 years after it was created, there are still millions of lines of COBOL running highly critical code in institutions all around the world.
Computer, write crappy code! (Score:2)
Sorry Dave, I am not allowed to copy Microsoft source code.
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Hi! I'm Clippy! It looks like you want to write crappy code! Copy/pasting the Windows 3.0 source code into your workspace...
Clearly not meant for programming in the large... (Score:2)
...but that won't stop the boss's brother-in-law's nephew who "knows computers" from building the company's inventory management system in it.
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...but that won't stop the boss's brother-in-law's nephew who "knows computers" from building the company's inventory management system in it.
Don't worry too much, a good portion of the work you don't get today from people who make decisions to use systems like this will be available again down the road, where you can make twice the money "fixing" the initial solution.
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No Jess, I'm not talki
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fast food of coding (Score:4, Insightful)
although MS is not the only offender... has anyone ever seen the code these things spit out?
it sure won't be anything as terse and readable as "Filter('BC Orders' Left('Product Name',4)="Kids")"
don't believe me? take a look at the HTML/CSS version of a Word Doc in a text editor to make the most minor of changes; be sure to sit down first, cuz it's gonna take a while; this not the only output example, but you get the idea
someone else mentioned debugging and this is where I'm going with it; although the code 'works', looking under the hood to tinker/fix anything beyond that will be a tough one; and changing anything can break interoperability with the generator itself, which means you're stuck wallowing in your own ignorance
it's the a fast food burger of coding... sure, it has it's place, but ease and convenience have a price; salesmanship and marketing will promise something nutritious, hand-crafted and gourmet, but the reality of what you end up eating never ever looks like the picture on the menu nor tastes as good as you hoped
Re:fast food of coding (Score:4, Interesting)
although MS is not the only offender... has anyone ever seen the code these things spit out?
There is no "these things"
This is GPT-3.
This thing basically passes the turing test. In long compositions, judges are only able to guess with 52% accuracy whether the text was composed by a human or a computer.
It is capable of translating one set of text it understands to another. And as it turns out, it understands several programming languages as a consequence of its training.
I.e., it should be able to translate into code as eloquently as it can produce English.
Not good enough (Score:2)
Coding is the easy part (Score:1)
The hard part is understanding the problem and thinking clearly about how to solve it. Natural language coding isn't going to help people who aren't anal retentive enough to do that.
Coding isn't hard, logic is (Score:2)
I think the real issue with coding, is the logic behind it. Coding is trivial if you work out what's supposed to happen. Even if a system accept natural language, you'd need to be able to tell it to build backend tables in a database, tie them together, change fields based on certain conditions, spin off secondary processes with specific order of operations, and more.
Anyone can understand how Pac-man works pretty easy. But someone had to figure out how each ghost moves (which is different), how scores are t
Attempted before ... (Score:2)
We've had attempts before that aim at giving non technical people access to programming without special training.
Two examples come to mind: COBOL and SQL.
The former was supposed to be a COmmon Business Oriented Language, meaning that business people could use it.
The latter was meant for managers to get reports without waiting for programmers to do the work for them.
Or so was the marketing spin ... none of that panned out ...