Will ChatGPT Change Software Development?
AI is once again humming and making headlines. This is because of ChatGPT, a chatbot that can write in natural language, people are now able to write emails, music lyrics, poetry, as well as academic essays. Early users of ChatGPT have even used it to create Python code and also reverse-engineer shell programmes before they created a C equivalent.
What is ChatGPT?
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Open AI debuted ChatGPT, an AI chatbot, on November 30, 2022. Ever since its debut, it has reached a couple of milestones. Check out the following stats:
- The New York Times described it as the most powerful AI chatbot ever released.
- Intimidated Google into issuing a “code-red” and developing a Bard AI
- Bing has had a 10x increase in downloads after the connection with ChatGPT was announced.
- It became the fastest-growing consumer application in history in January, two months after launching, with 100 million monthly active users.
- With 25 million hits each day, the ChatGPT website has now received 619 million visits.
- Following the introduction of ChatGPT, OpenAI’s monthly page views increased by 1561%, from 18.3 million in November 2022 to 304 million in December 2022.
- Following the announcement of ChatGPT, OpenAI was ranked 44th globally in terms of traffic in January 2023.
The bot is capable of creating straightforward websites and programmes using JavaScript, Python, and React. The program can also be used to detect problems in existing programs and to develop new programming languages.
ChatGPT also raises the question of whether authors and developers will be replaced by ChatGPT in an identical way that some cashiers, assembly-line employees, and perhaps taxi drivers in the future have been replaced by robotics and computers. Those who are anticipating the emergence of real-world AI applications are encouraged by ChatGPT.
It was created by OpenAI, the company behind the well-known text-to-image AI engine DALL-E, and is run on a massive language model that was trained on vast volumes of text that was scraped from the internet, including code repositories. The system trains itself to respond to user questions with complete sentences that appear to have been written by a human while using algorithms to analyse the content.
You can ask it to write a Shakespearean-style poem about trees or an article on how artificial intelligence is being used in business, and you’ll receive exactly that. The fact that it can also generate computer code, however, has surprised many people who earn a living by programming software. It will cheerfully produce web pages, programmes, and even simple games in any of a multitude of distinct programming languages if you tell it to. Some of the most widely used languages for software development are Python, C, and Javascript.
It is difficult to estimate how sophisticated AI text-creation capabilities will be in the future given that the technology is digesting more and more examples of human internet writing. Yet it is anticipated that its programming capabilities are extremely constrained as there are a lot of challenges in software development using this. It might simply become another tool in the developer’s toolbox for handling jobs that don’t require the critical thinking abilities that software developers offer their clients.
What are the benefits of using ChatGPT?
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Using ChatGPT has a number of benefits, some of them are:
1. ChatGPT can help you save time.
ChatGPT can assist you do a programming task much more quickly in case you are having any kind of issues with it. It reduces your workload so that you can concentrate on more essential things by taking care of the tedious tasks for you.
One of the key benefits of ChatGPT is that it can save programmers quite a lot of time. They may simply describe what they wish to get done from the code, and ChatGPT will take care of the entire process, rather than having to type out the code themselves.
This might greatly speed up software development as it assist the programmer in predicting software development trends and make it simpler for programmers.
2. ChatGPT can help you improve your productivity.
ChatGPT can improvise your productivity by assisting you with your programming duties. The fact that ChatGPT might well be able to write better code than humans is another possible benefit. AI has long proved that it can perform certain jobs assigned, that includes bug fixing better than programmers.
Hence, as a result, ChatGPT would probably be able to produce software that is more dependable and effective. This is because you can focus on the more important aspects of your business while delegating the tedious work to the chatbot.
3. ChatGPT can help you learn new things.
One of ChatGPT’s best advantages is the capacity for learning new things. ChatGPT can explain a subject to you in a style that is simple to understand if you are having trouble understanding it. Consequently, you will learn new programming concepts more quickly and become a better programmer.
What are the drawbacks of using ChatGPT?
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While ChatGPT is useful, it has a number of shortcomings. The very same restrictions that make it difficult to utilize for content creation also make it risky for coding. These shortcomings are:
1. ChatGPT cannot understand human intelligence
Although it is based on data rather than human intelligence, its comments may sound rational, but it is unable to provide responses that are based on critical thought. Also, it recycles offensive material like hate speech. Responses may seem sensible, yet they could be very wrong. For instance, ChatGPT will firmly state, after giving a thorough justification, that 1,000 is larger when asked which one of two numbers, 1,000 and 1,062, was larger.
An example of using ChatGPT to assist in code debugging can be seen on the OpenAI website. Because the replies are generated from older code and lack the capacity to duplicate human-based quality assurance, they may contain faults and errors. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT occasionally provides plausible-sounding answers but they are illogical or incorrect. It shouldn’t be utilised directly in the creation of any applications because of this.
2. Struggles to do good programming
Notwithstanding any coding flaws, ChatGPT struggles to do good programming because, like any machine learning tools, it is trained on data that favours its output (in this case, a textual nature). The objective use of the software they are developing and the users of it must be understood by software engineers. It is impossible to create high-quality software by slapping together programmes with recycled code.
For instance, ChatGPT is unable to comprehend ambiguity in straightforward needs. ChatGPT suffers with this detail, which will be required if these systems ever replace developers.
Few other drawbacks are as follows:
- To start, it’s still in beta, so there are plenty of bugs which need to be worked out.
- Second, because it is a closed-source project, the community cannot help with its creation.
- Third, there may be less resources available for users because it has not gained as much traction as other open-source chatbots.
Should Developers be worried about ChatGPT?
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It makes sense for programmers and other specialists to be concerned about losing their careers as AI develops. It’s crucial to remember that AI won’t replace programmers; rather, it will supplement and improve human work.
To assure their continued relevance in the age of AI, programmers can take the following steps:
1. Keep learning:
To stay current with the newest tools and technology, programmers should constantly learn new things and refresh their knowledge. In addition to increasing their value to potential employers, this will also keep them ahead of the curve as AI develops.
2. Embrace AI:
Programmers should welcome AI and learn how to work with it, not fear it. AI has the potential to be a potent tool for task automation and efficiency improvement, freeing up programmers’ time to work on more challenging and innovative projects.
3. Focus on unique human skills:
While AI can automate some processes, it cannot take the place of the distinct human abilities required for programming, such as creativity, problem-solving, and critical thinking. Focusing on acquiring these abilities will make programmers relevant in the job.
Ending Note
Coming back to the question as to whether ChatGPT will change software development: yes it will gradually change the way software development is done but ChatGPT won’t take the position of programmers. Notwithstanding the fact it could potentially be able to automate some of them, ChatGPT cannot do a lot of things. While ChatGPT may replace some coding tasks, such as developing boilerplate code or generalized functions, it won’t completely replace programmers. Programmers will still be needed to oversee software development initiatives, write code, and track down errors.
Yet, ChatGPT might open the door for brand-new positions. For instance, in the age of AI, prompt engineering will grow into a skill set in demand. There will also be more demand for software developers knowledgeable in data science principles as a result of the growth of AI programmers like ChatGPT. For instance engineers who are proficient in Python, other data science platforms can efficiently design, develop, and test applications.
Future advancements may quicken the pace at which we approach the day when human programmers, or many other types of experts, will simply not be required. Nonetheless, for the time being, we can be sure that a variety of talents are still needed to create software, and that computers are not going to be able to reproduce such skills any time soon.
