from Hacker News

More than a quarter of all new code at Google is generated by AI

by bgrainger on 10/29/24, 11:10 PM with 31 comments

  • by nnf on 10/29/24, 11:23 PM

    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.

  • by 000ooo000 on 10/29/24, 11:58 PM

    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?

  • by gnabgib on 10/30/24, 12:30 AM

  • by Animats on 10/29/24, 11:29 PM

    Any good examples of such generated code? Anything to look at on Github, Gitlab, etc?

  • by add-sub-mul-div on 10/29/24, 11:33 PM

    AI code is the new offshore code. Have fun maintaining it.

  • by muglug on 10/29/24, 11:32 PM

  • by AStonesThrow on 10/30/24, 4:34 AM

    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?

  • by burnt-resistor on 10/30/24, 3:26 AM

    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.

  • by mysterydip on 10/29/24, 11:27 PM

    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 ;)

  • by null_deref on 10/29/24, 11:30 PM

    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

  • by uberman on 10/29/24, 11:51 PM

    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?

  • by drewcoo on 10/30/24, 12:50 AM

    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.

  • by babyent on 10/29/24, 11:37 PM

    What kind of code? That’s pretty important to know right?

  • by jasomill on 10/30/24, 5:25 AM

    This would be more interesting if it were supported by representative examples from Google open source projects.

  • by ivewonyoung on 10/30/24, 12:56 AM

    Are they using models that are public, or are these customized private models.

  • by sys_64738 on 10/30/24, 2:11 AM

    Mission critical code? Unit tests? Context matters.

  • by jesse__ on 10/29/24, 11:24 PM

    RIP Google

  • by asdfasdf1 on 10/30/24, 2:23 AM

    and it shows