Follow along with the video here:
Introduction
Github Copilot X has just been announced. The AI that can write code thanks to the newest GPT-4 language model by OpenAI. Everyone is wondering, will it replace developers? I would say instead of replacing, it will empower programmers. It’s like having a junior developer sit next to you and do all the boring stuff you don’t wanna do.
Microsoft has been on a killstreak recently with all of these new AI products launching in the last couple of weeks. With the release of Copilot for Office, bing Chatbot, bing image generator, their huge stake (add numbers) in OpenAI, and now Github Copilot, Microsoft is just spawn killing at this point to get ahead of the competition.
So, what makes Github Copilot X so much better than its predecessor? Well first of all, the last version of Github Copilot was trained on GPT-3, while X is trained on GPT-4. Just to show you how much of a difference the language model can make, look at the parameters side by side. GPT-3 has 175 Billion learning parameters while GPT-4 has 100 trillion.
And who said size doesn’t matter?
Apparently GPT-4 has 1 trillion, not 100 trillion parameters
Github states that “GitHub Copilot is already writing 46% of code and helps developers code up to 55% faster”. Basically for the past two years, we’ve already been ushering an era of bionic programmers. Copilot X goes beyond just auto-completing comments and code. Github states that now it will be present throughout the entire development lifecycle. Using OpenAI’s new GPT-4 language model, copilot X will have chat and voice functionality, help you with pull requests, be available in the command line, and even live in your technical docs to answer questions about your projects. Next time I’m in a meeting where the stakeholders add a ton of new requirements for a project, I’ll just use copilots voice activation to write it all down in my docs.
Check out my video up top to see all the new copilot features.
The first feature is a built in chatbot for your ide. You can see here that it proposes fixes for your code, recognizes the errors that your code outputs, and a ton of other stuff. I wish I had copilot a few years ago to get me unstuck instead of talking to this rubber ducky. Matter of fact, screw the rubber duck. We don’t need that shit anymore. I’ll just talk to something that can actually respond to me instead.
Another feature of Copilot is auto-describing your pull-requests. No more having to use extra brain power to describe what you just did, just let the AI do it for you. Take a look at this demo video: It auto completes your pull requests based on your code and title. Also if you want to use any of these features in your repositories, you can sign up for the technical preview using the link in the description.
Copilot can now tell you if you are missing test cases as well. As if I don’t have enough problems to deal with. In this demo, you can see that the water heater pull request contains some new code that should have unit tests. Copilot won’t just tell you about this, it can even write most of the tests for you. Now you can brag to all your coworkers that your test coverage is 100%.
The final feature introduced in Copilot is AI powered documentation. No more having to search through bloated and horrible documentation to find the write function to use. You’ll have your own chatbot built into the documentation which will give you the answers you need much quicker. Check it out: in the beginning of the demo, notice the 3 different sliders. You can customize the response you get from Copilot based on those inputs. For example, if you are an advanced user, you will get a more technical response. This is basically just ChatGPT built into documentation.
So, while Copilot X won’t replace developers, it will definitely make us more efficient. In a couple years, it will be rare to read code that hasn’t been touched by an AI. Make sure to check out my other blog posts and watch the Youtube video for more information.
Technical Preview
Sign up for the technical preview here: Technical Preview
Thanks for reading!
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