Articles

Does AI replace coding companies?

What is AI?

AI (Artificial Intelligence) has a bit of a bad labelling crisis, It is neither artificial, nor intelligence.

If it were artificial it would sit outside normal life as a fake or imitation of the mainstream, instead it is plugged into the heart of available human knowledge through its learning and understanding of information on the internet.
We don't fully understand intelligence as we observe it in humans and animals, but we do know that it is complex and multi-dimensional.
Intelligence can be logic driven (in theory so is AI, though its foundation on linguistic learning models can make that break down)
Intelligence can be knowledge driven - AI excels at this, you can feed it huge amounts of knowledge and it is absorbed and known. However, a negative ref. AI is that while it has access to large quantities of data, it can be tricky to understand where that data is accurate or complete, and what weighting to put on contrary pieces of data. A human will absorb far less data, but can be far more accurate at prioritising and knowing where to find data and which data to accept.
Intelligence can be creative - artists, performers, sports men and women, chefs, craftsmen, the list is endless - all able to bring creativity to what they do, to think out of the box, to create from nothing, to establish something new. This is a very weak area for AI - it can only do as programmed, it is not sentient so can't even explore random outcomes with any form of understanding of inherent quality and usability.

So does it have any value for coding: The simple answer is yes - coding being logic driven and using variables which are defined in the code is fairly transparent to a learning engine, so once it has sufficient learning material, there is an ability to suggest new code and structure it based on learned patterns.

So, what are the positive?

Coding is a language - and like any language, humans can be at a range of levels, even where proficient, we do though forget elements and may not know some of the more esoteric parts - but an AI system shouldn't have that issue - it always has the complete knowledge set at its disposal. This should make it faster to produce code than a human and it should be more efficient.

It is simply faster than a human might type - producing pages of code in seconds

It should be up to date and use the latest code.

It should be able to produce code at levels above the ability of its end user - allowing access to coding for those without skill or previous experience./p>

Are there negatives?

It is only as strong as the material it uses to learn - as we all know, there are many inaccurate pages / websites on the web - if those are fed into the learning system then it is likely that some of those inaccuracies will come out into the results.

It is only as accurate as the prompt, it can be tricky to get a prompt worded correctly and so in the ommissions, will be assumptions from the AI system.

The AI will not understand the code you are adding to, nor be able to anticipate code you may wish for in the future, so it will produce code outside those contexts.

Public AI systems will be weaker than bespoke internal systems - take AI principles and apply them to the house manual on coding styles / etc. and you should get more accurate results, but those using AI to 'code' are likely to be at the cheaper end of the market without their own coding team, so these factors my cause issues.

Conclusion?

AI is a maturing technology, it is already remarkable what it can do, however it is still deeply flawed and while it appeals most to the amateur looking to save money on 3rd prty developers, that same amateur is least able to review and correct the output, so issues will creep in. However it continues to develop and is alredy a capable solution for elements of code, but won't replace coding companies quite yet.

So how do I benefit from AI?

The reality is that most individuals will be taking a level of risk in using AI in its current iteration. It is possible that it will work, but if not there will be challenges in debugging it. However, coding companies are already using it and far from replacing them, it ehances their workflow, reduces time taken to code and ultimately keeps prices lower for clients.

Here at Designtoo, it is one of many tools we use - we use it when appropriate and to save time, but there is still currently a balancing overhead of having to check it for accuracy, so it is not how we build most of our code. We are also very experienced at coding websites in ways which anticipate how our customer might wish to develop in the future, and AI struggles with that, so for now it is a useful tool, but it doesn't replace real coding.