From the course: Tech Trends

GitHub Copilot

From the course: Tech Trends

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GitHub Copilot

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(mellow electronic music) - GitHub Copilot is an artificial intelligence tool that writes entire functions for you in many programming languages based on the context of your code. It uses an artificial intelligence technology called GPT3, which stands for Generative Pre-Trained Transformer. It's a natural language processor that uses big data to predict what you will be writing, so they can do things like answer questions or write sentences for you. Copilot uses a new algorithm based on GPT3 called codex, which focuses on software source code. Although it works with many popular programming languages and frameworks, it's especially good with languages that have lots of publicly available code like Python, JavaScript, Ruby, and others. Microsoft, who owns GitHub, made a $1 billion investment in the company that created codex called OpenAI. The code is synthesized from public sources like existing GitHub repos. As more and more people use the tool, it will also train codex and help it provide better solutions. You can activate it by starting to write a function with a meaningful name, and Copilot will attempt to create that function for you. Or you can provide a detailed comment that will be used to query the codex. The code it produces is not just copied from open source. It's brand new code generated by the algorithm, and it's surprisingly accurate. Think of it as the next generation of auto-complete. Although right now it's in its infancy, GitHub Copilot is poised to change the way you code in the future.

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