To make it easier for programmers to write code and for amateur coders to get started coding, researchers at AI research firm OpenAI have released a new machine learning tool that can translate English into computer code. With this, researchers aim to facilitate the workflow of professional coders and enable entry-level programmers to create simple websites and games.
A machine learning tool called Codex can seamlessly translate English sentences into code. You can also translate other programming languages to work on data science queries.
How does it work?
Now, on how Codex works, in a tool demo, OpenAI shows how programmers and coders can use it to build simple websites and basic games. Codex can write tool commands in English, and Codex will automatically convert them to computer code.
For example, a programmer could write “create a web page with a menu bar on the side and a title on the top,” and Codex will do the rest. It uses GPT-3, an OpenAI language generative model trained with large amounts of data from the web. As a result, Codex can easily generate relevant code based on simple English sentences.
Currently, before developing Codex, researchers used earlier versions of the tools mentioned above to develop a tool called CoPilot for GitHub. This was similar to the autocomplete tool that Gmail and other applications use to complete a user’s text while composing an email or message.
However, Codex is a much more advanced version of the tool that allows you to write code as well as complete it. This tool has been trained especially in open source code repositories from the web to enable the automatic translation feature.
The future of codecs
Today, Codex uses open source code to create applications or web pages, and many codex complains about the reliability of the tool. In many cases, it suggests that short code snippets created by other developers will follow your commands. Therefore, many people complain that OpenAI benefits from the work of others, which is unfair to their developers and coders.
However, the CTO of OpenAI Greg Brockman believes that the emergence of new technologies requires this debate, but that these types of technologies can reshape the economy and solve the problem of a shortage of programmers in the United States.
Codex is a great tool for programmers, especially entry-level coders, but it’s worth mentioning that it’s far from perfect at this point. Nonetheless, researchers will work on tools to further refine it in the coming days. Therefore, if you are a programmer, you can join the waiting list and try Codex from the official website.
