More than 25% of Google’s new code is already generated with AI

Alphabet, Google’s parent company, recently presented its financial results for the third quarter of 2024, but it was CEO Sundar Pichai who brought interesting news after this presentation.

During the traditional investor conference, he revealed that more than 25% of the code that powers Google products is already generated by artificial intelligence, and is only reviewed and approved by human engineers. Find out more!

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AI plays an important role at Google

Innovation in software development is now under the command of advanced AI tools, especially after the merger of the Gemini and DeepMind teams, two divisions of Alphabet focused on artificial intelligence.

According to Pichai, this integration has accelerated model development and led Google to optimize efficiency in several areas, especially in its user-facing products.

“Today, more than a quarter of all new code at Google is being generated by AI and then reviewed and accepted by engineers”said Pichai. For Pichai, this process not only increases productivity but allows engineers to “do more and move faster,” which can increase pace and innovation.

The world of programming is being transformed

This reliance on AI tools to generate code is not unique to Google. The popularity of systems like GitHub Copilot, one of the best-known AI-assisted programming tools, shows how technology is increasingly affecting the role of the programmer.

In the summer of 2023, a survey conducted by GitHub indicated that 92% of developers were already using AI tools to assist with coding. However, this change also comes with some concerns.

The main one is that AI-generated code is not error-free and often relies on human reviews to ensure its accuracy and security. Furthermore, the perception of market experts is that programmers who rely excessively on these tools may end up unlearning fundamental coding skills, as they are constantly using AI assistants and this may end up taking away developers’ attention to detail.

Will AI replace developers?

For some experts, the future of programming is increasingly clear: programmers will no longer need to write the code, AI will do it. Technology CEOs, such as Mark Garman, from AWS, and Jensen Huang, from Nvidia, have already spoken about this, revealing similar opinions, stating that traditional programming could be dispensed with, as AI would be able to assume this responsibility.

But this idea still generates a lot of debate. Pichai’s statement about Google, while reinforcing the automation trend, also raises doubts about the impact of this change on the developer profession. If AI truly becomes capable of generating high-quality, autonomous code, many developers could see their role reduced to mere reviewers, approving automatically generated code rather than creating it from scratch.

Pichai’s revelation marks a turning point in software development and the role of artificial intelligence in programming. If, on the one hand, AI has the potential to accelerate software production, on the other, it can drastically change the developer profession and transform the way we create technology.

Therefore, as Google and other technology giants continue to rely on AI to generate code, industry professionals need to adapt to ensure that human skills continue to have value and ensure the necessary security, ethics and innovation.

Source: Xataka