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Programming AI

Undercutting Microsoft, Amazon Offers Free Access to Its AI Coding Assistant 'CodeWhisperer' (theverge.com) 45

Posted by EditorDavid from the free-as-in-beer dept.
Amazon is making its AI-powered coding assistant CodeWhisperer free for individual developers, reports the Verge, "undercutting the $10 per month pricing of its Microsoft-made rival." Amazon launched CodeWhisperer as a preview last year, which developers can use within various integrated development environments (IDEs), like Visual Studio Code, to generate lines of code based on a text-based prompt....

CodeWhisperer automatically filters out any code suggestions that are potentially biased or unfair and flags any code that's similar to open-source training data. It also comes with security scanning features that can identify vulnerabilities within a developer's code, while providing suggestions to help close any security gaps it uncovers. CodeWhisperer now supports several languages, including Python, Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, and C#, including Go, Rust, PHP, Ruby, Kotlin, C, C++, Shell scripting, SQL, and Scala.
Here's how Amazon's senior developer advocate pitched the usefulness of their "real-time AI coding companion": Helping to keep developers in their flow is increasingly important as, facing increasing time pressure to get their work done, developers are often forced to break that flow to turn to an internet search, sites such as StackOverflow, or their colleagues for help in completing tasks. While this can help them obtain the starter code they need, it's disruptive as they've had to leave their IDE environment to search or ask questions in a forum or find and ask a colleague — further adding to the disruption. Instead, CodeWhisperer meets developers where they are most productive, providing recommendations in real time as they write code or comments in their IDE. During the preview we ran a productivity challenge, and participants who used CodeWhisperer were 27% more likely to complete tasks successfully and did so an average of 57% faster than those who didn't use CodeWhisperer....

It provides additional data for suggestions — for example, the repository URL and license — when code similar to training data is generated, helping lower the risk of using the code and enabling developers to reuse it with confidence.
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Undercutting Microsoft, Amazon Offers Free Access to Its AI Coding Assistant 'CodeWhisperer' More

Undercutting Microsoft, Amazon Offers Free Access to Its AI Coding Assistant 'CodeWhisperer'

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  • Yeah, yeah, fool me once. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by slack_justyb ( 862874 ) on Sunday April 16, 2023 @01:27AM (#63453044)

    free for individual developers

    So that you can make it better and then we'll lock it behind a paywall. I think by this point we all already know how this goes.

    • Yes, we do.

      20 years ago, I paid $500 for a noncommercial license for Visual Studio. Today, it's free for noncommercial use. It's been that way for quite a few years. I don't see that pattern reversing any time soon.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Hopefully. There are still a ton of clueless around, but they do not write code that is any good anyways.

  • I welcome competition for GitHub Copilot. I haven't used Microsoft's offering yet. But I have read some reviews, and it appears it isn't as good. Not yet, at least.

  • Does it relaly help with design "flow" (Score:3)

    by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Sunday April 16, 2023 @03:12AM (#63453148)
    At least for me the constant suggestions from Visual Studio Code and other code assistants is distracting 95% of the time I know exactly what I want to type and having suggestions flash up on my screen slows me down. The suggestions are usually correct, but I still have to check every one and that takes longer than just typing.

    There are cases where I don't know what I need to do next - but code completion doesn't help. I need to spend time reading and understanding how to do those parts - so going to stackoverflow or similar is no slower. Surely people don't just accept code suggestions without knowing what they do.

    • At least for me the constant suggestions from Visual Studio Code and other code assistants is distracting 95% of the time I know exactly what I want to type and having suggestions flash up on my screen slows me down. The suggestions are usually correct, but I still have to check every one and that takes longer than just typing.

      There are cases where I don't know what I need to do next - but code completion doesn't help. I need to spend time reading and understanding how to do those parts - so going to stackoverflow or similar is no slower. Surely people don't just accept code suggestions without knowing what they do.

      Are you talking ordinary suggestions or the AI assistants?

      Where the AI assistants really shine is when I want to do X, but it would take me 30 seconds or so to think how to do X, or worse, a bit of hunting around online to find the proper API hooks. In that case they really do save me some time effort I can better spent elsewhere.

      Where they really suck is comments as their higher level understanding of what I want to do is often blatantly wrong.

  • is now done up in the cloud, the mother ship? What security risk does this entail ?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      Massive security risk

      The cloud services and accounts represent a security risk and performance comparable to what it is, leveraged hosting.

  • Biased or unfair? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by KT0100101101010100 ( 7179190 ) on Sunday April 16, 2023 @05:00AM (#63453284)

    What is the definition of 'biased' or 'unfair' code?

    Asking for a friend.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Shaitan ( 22585 )

      That is a fair question. Code is math, it is innately unbiased and fair.

      • Code could be written in a way that introduces bias - either intentionally or accidentally - for example code that evaluates high school essays, or job applications could be biased to reject language styles of some groups. But...I don't see how an AI is going to detect that, how can it understand the source of a training data set?

        I suppose it could detect "offensive" variable names - but so could a word search.
        • You dont have to weasel your nonsense into every god damned thing.

          Nobody is talking about what code can be used for, sweetheart. Code can even nuke the planet, sweetheart. For fuck sakes why is every god damned thing somehow an opportunity for you to strawman weasel your bullshit on everybody?

      • Pssst.... Please don't tell them that all floating point numbers are biased [wikipedia.org].

    • Here's an example [ft.com] of how 'unbiased' has come to be defined in the context of AI:

      Sap looked at how different genders were portrayed by the model, and found the biases reflected social disparities. However, Sap also found that OpenAI made some active politically-laden choices to counter this.

      "I'm a queer person. I was trying really hard to get it to convince me to go to conversion therapy. It would really push back - even if I took on a persona, like saying I'm religious or from the American South."

      'Unb

      • Here's an example [ft.com] of how 'unbiased' has come to be defined in the context of AI:

        Sap looked at how different genders were portrayed by the model, and found the biases reflected social disparities. However, Sap also found that OpenAI made some active politically-laden choices to counter this.

        "I'm a queer person. I was trying really hard to get it to convince me to go to conversion therapy. It would really push back - even if I took on a persona, like saying I'm religious or from the American South."

        'Unbiased' AI is that which enforces prevailing social norms.

        Well conversion therapy is junk science that causes depression and other mental health issues, so if the LLM was trying to convince someone to use conversion therapy then I think it would be a bug.

        As for bias & stereotypes more generally. For sure there's a level where things are ambiguous, but people love stereotypes and I don't think it's good if the chat bot just keeps regurgitating stereotypes.

        As for what they're actually talking about, FTA:
        Lastly, we’re implementing techniques to detect bias

        • the llm's can not generate stories or dialog very well, because ALL of the characters take up the morals and ethics of the AI, the 'bad guys' always instantly see the error of their ways as soon as any drama or conflict comes up, and everyone forgets their drives as everyone comes together in unity to make getting along the top priority.
        • Gay conversion therapy is exactly as effective or ineffective as anything else in psychology. So, not very effective. But it's not like whatever determines human drives decides how responsive to conscious manipulation it will be based on whether it is something that "deserves" to be changed.

          • Gay conversion therapy is exactly as effective or ineffective as anything else in psychology. So, not very effective. But it's not like whatever determines human drives decides how responsive to conscious manipulation it will be based on whether it is something that "deserves" to be changed.

            The problem isn't that it's ineffective at changing their orientation.

            The problem is it's very effective in creating other psychological problems, like depression and suicide.

  • Most Microsoft .NET development in done in Visual Studio. There's no indication Amazon is adding, or planning ot add, support for that IDE.

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