AlphaCode and what's next

Earlier this week, Deepmind, a Google-owned artificial intelligence company, announced AlphaCode, an AI system that can write computer programs at a competitive level.

Like OpenAI's Codex model, AlphaCode uses transformer-based language models to understand the written-in-plain text problems and generate a computer code. To validate the performance of the AlphaCode model, the Deepmind team tested it on previous competitions hosted by Codeforces, a popular platform for programming competitions. The results are impressive.

AlphaCode achieved an estimated rank within the top 54% of participants in programming competitions by solving new problems that require a combination of critical thinking, logic, algorithms, coding, and natural language understanding.

Codding competitions require not only good coding skills but also creativity. And no, I didn't participate in any of the programming competitions - my programming skills are not that good, and I don't consider myself a software developer, but I wrote some code before. Moreover, I did the Foobar challenge - a secret tool Google uses to recruit Software developers. It happened in 2020 when I decided to brush up on my programming skills. I began to go over some basic algorithms and solve problems on Leetcode. I had to brush up on data structures, design patterns, programming techniques, etc. One day, I was searching for some kind of Python function, and suddenly, my Google search page transformed, and I got a message: "You're speaking our language. Up for a challenge?".

My first thought was - "Am I hacked or something?" I did quick research, and it was legit - a foobar challenge - a secret tool Google uses to find Software Developers. So I clicked "I want to play." You get timebox questions to solve - one question on the first level, two on the second, three on the third, etc. After I finished the third level, I got an email from a Google recruiter asking if I would like to chat about opportunities at Google. And so we connected and had a great conversation. Unfortunately, she was recruiting for SDR positions only.

Okay, now let's go back to the AlphaCode. When I read the article, I thought, how would AlphaCode perform in the Foobar challenge? What would Google have to change to keep the challenge more relevant? How would having AlphaCode affect developers in the future?

I am not worried about AlphaCode replacing developers. After all, writing a code is just one part of a software developer's responsibilities and, in many cases, requires you to know the whole system and APIs to write the code.

This brings me to something I strongly believe in ( although we are terrible predictors, according to Nasim Taleb¹). I think AI is here to assist humans and enhance our capabilities. Yes, it can be used to do evil, just like many other things in our lives ( from gunpowder to nuclear power). I can see both AlphaCode and Codex (and based on Sam Altman's statement, the next versions of GPT would focus solely on Codex ) as significant enablers. There is a constant shortage of software developers, and writing code is one of the most expensive parts of product development. Reducing the time it takes to write a piece of code would be an outstanding achievement and great savings to any organization. Developers can't live without Stackoverflow, and I think the AI-powered code generation tool would be a new developer's friend in the near future.

I am looking forward to trying AlphaCode myself. Adding it to my long list of things I would like to do 😉