Winter is coming (AI-assisted coding and its influence on Free Pascal)

[cpicanco]

As a community that want to survive for long and long years to come, I was wondering if Free Pascal feels it is being threatened by the avalanche of productivity promised by other ecosystems that already are really integrated with AI-assisted coding.

Currently, I am aware of two sorts of AI-assisted coding:

1) Gihub Copilot and alike, that is auto-completion with steroids and

2) GPT's like coding. A promise that people will, very soon, be able to use natural language to implement software solutions and full applications connected to generative AI's.

Some business people are turning the use of AI-assisted tools mandatory. Some are even threatining to fire people that don't known how to use it.

So, what do you think?

Raise your hand if you would like to have AI-assisted tools integreated to the Free Pascal workflow and Lazarus workflow.

[440bx]

I'm probably difficult but, personally, I much prefer real intelligence than artificial intelligence.

I think Einstein's observation about things being infinite should be applied to AI as well.

[cpicanco]

I would like to share with you some concrete examples of AI-Assisted coding in my own current main project.

I need to run some psychological experiments and I am writing a  software for presenting slides with shapes and media using Lazarus and Free Pascal. I feel my self doing some complicated stuff a lot more faster than some years ago. For example, without generative AI, I would not be able to write a real time sound recorder with thread support in a couple of days. If you are a really fluent and skilled programmer, you may think it is trivial. But I am not a professional programmer.

I spent the last week coding some data analysis and graphication with matplotlib using VSCode, Python, and MySQL. I was really surprised to see that all my routine problems with matplotlib and SQL were being promptly solved by GitHub copilot or ChatGPT.

So, as you can see, I am coding in two different ecosystems: Python and Free Pascal/Lazarus. For reasons I cannot clearly explain, I still prefer Pascal's sintax over Python's sintax. But I cannot neglet the difference in speed. With python you do stuff much faster, specially when you known what you are doing and have AI-assisted coding tools available.

[cpicanco]

So, just found out that Delphi have some open source stuff here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Li3CP9PtI1I

[TRon]

Some business people are turning the use of AI-assisted tools mandatory. Some are even threatining to fire people that don't known how to use it.

My boss will fire the whole team if there is even a suspicion of someone in the team having used any AI assistant. It is a legal nightmare.

2 cents and just saying.

[swwei]

I challenge if A.I. could develop a total new  O.S.!

[dbannon]

Long time ago, when i did my ComSci degree, we were told that in the life cycle of software, on average, 33% of the programmer's time (ie the cost) was spent initially designing and writing it, the remainder was maintaining it, finding day zero bugs, adding end user requests, porting to new platforms etc.

I see AI being quite helpful in that initial stage, yes, perhaps it can do a good part of the initial writing, but not much of the initial designing. And almost none of the debugging / extending. Obviously that will change over time but some parts will always be harder for AI to help than others.

I can just imagine it, "hey AI, I want you to find this bug, here, I will fax you the source code....".

Davo

[Thaddy]

As it stands there are multiple ways to interpret AI
E.g. models like those from chatGPT are modelled after REAL intelligence, not after paradigms that factor out humans.  So what factor is artifical?

[440bx]

So what factor is artifical?

One among many, the total inability of A.I to _analyze_ a problem.

A.I can provide you with a copy of Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat's Last Theorem but, it is unable to derive a _new_ proof of even the simplest mathematical theorems which means, A.I is as dumb as a rock (but if you believe Einstein then maybe A.I is a form of real intelligence - or lack thereof <chuckle>.)

When A.I shows it has acquired the ability to improve itself _and_ independently making the decision to improve itself (IOW, not someone asking it to do it) then and only then, it will be reasonable to suspect there is actually a trace of intelligence there.

[Thaddy]

The counter proof is easy: humans invented it, so by proxy it is not artificial.
Merry Christmas everyone. (Off to the snow, I hope)

[440bx]

The counter proof is easy: humans invented it, so by proxy it is not artificial.

You should work for a company that sells artificial flavors... they are not artificial because ...

Too bad we can't include that axiom in Euclid's Elements.

[loaded]

Morpheus:   “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”
–The Matrix

The Battle of Artificial and Real Intelligence 

Artificial Intelligence, like other programming tools, can make things easier, but I think it can never replace Morpheus. 

[marcov]

As it stands there are multiple ways to interpret AI
E.g. models like those from chatGPT are modelled after REAL intelligence, not after paradigms that factor out humans.  So what factor is artifical?

A chosen and vetted subset of impressions rather than "random, deal with it!"

[cpicanco]

A.I can provide you with a copy of Andrew Wiles proof of Fermat's Last Theorem but, it is unable to derive a _new_ proof of even the simplest mathematical theorems which means, A.I is as dumb as a rock (but if you believe Einstein then maybe A.I is a form of real intelligence - or lack thereof <chuckle>.)

Humm. The point is humans WITH AI-assisted tools. I am not worried about AGI and alike. My point is about what is happening right now. In less than a year AI-assisted tools happened and proved it useful for a lot of scenarios, including coding and software development in general.

[cpicanco]

Just to put it on perspective. The Free Pascal team are formed by really smart people with excellent pascal vocabulary, but they have very limited resources, and a small team. AI-assisted tools may help a lot in this scenario as long as the team agreed about some time-saving tasks that could be done with theses tools.