GitHub Copilot
GitHub Copilot is an AI pair programmer developed by GitHub and OpenAI to helps users by autocompleting code.[1][2] GitHub Copilot draws context from comments and code, and suggests individual lines and whole functions.[2] GitHub Copilot is powered by OpenAI Codex, an AI system created by OpenAI.[2] The GitHub Copilot technical preview is available as an extension for Visual Studio Code, Neovim, and the JetBrains suite of IDEs.[2] It was first announced by GitHub on 29 June 2021.[3]
Contents
Technology
GitHub Copilot is powered by a distinct production version of Codex, a GPT language model finetuned on publicly available code from GitHub, and study its Python code-writing capabilities.[4] Copilot is trained on public GitHub repositories of any license.[3] GitHub have put a few filters in place to prevent Copilot from generating offensive language, but the possibility of producing undesired outputs, including biased, discriminatory, abusive, or offensive outputs still remains.[1][2]
Origin
This project is a result of Microsoft’s $1 billion investment into OpenAI, the research firm now led by Y Combinator president Sam Altman.[1]
Accuracy
GitHub benchmarked against a set of Python functions that have test coverage in open source repos. They blanked out the function bodies and asked GitHub Copilot to fill them in. The model got right 43% of the time on the first try, and 57% of the time when allowed 10 attempts.[2]
An August 2021 study found that 40% of the code produced by Copilot included bugs, errors or potential security risks.[5]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Gershgorn, D. (2021, June 29). GitHub and OpenAI launch a new AI tool that generates its own code. The Verge. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/29/22555777/github-openai-ai-tool-autocomplete-code
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 GitHub copilot · your AI pair programmer. GitHub Copilot. (n.d.). Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://copilot.github.com/
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Gershgorn, D. (2021, July 7). GitHub's automatic coding tool rests on untested legal ground. The Verge. Retrieved January 27, 2022, from https://www.theverge.com/2021/7/7/22561180/github-copilot-legal-copyright-fair-use-public-code
- ↑ Chen, M., Tworek, J., Jun, H., Yuan, Q., Pinto, H. P. D. O., Kaplan, J., ... & Zaremba, W. (2021). Evaluating large language models trained on code. arXiv preprint arXiv:2107.03374.
- ↑ Pearce, H., Ahmad, B., Tan, B., Dolan-Gavitt, B., & Karri, R. (2021). An Empirical Cybersecurity Evaluation of GitHub Copilot's Code Contributions. arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.09293.
