Businesses using artificial intelligence to generate code are experiencing downtime and security issues. The team at Sonar, a provider of code quality

AI-Generated Code is Causing Outages and Security Issues in Businesses

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2024-09-19 10:30:07

Businesses using artificial intelligence to generate code are experiencing downtime and security issues. The team at Sonar, a provider of code quality and security products, has heard first-hand stories of consistent outages at even major financial institutions where the developers responsible for the code blame the AI.

Amongst many other imperfections, AI tools are not perfect at generating code. Bilkent University researchers found that the latest versions of ChatGPT, GitHub Copilot, and Amazon CodeWhisperer generated correct code just 65.2%, 46.3%, and 31.1% of the time, respectively.

Part of the problem is that AI is notoriously bad at maths because it struggles to understand logic. Plus, programmers are not known for being great at writing prompts because “AI doesn’t do things consistently or work like code,” according to Wharton AI professor Ethan Mollick.

In late 2023, more than half of organisations said they encountered security issues with poor AI-generated code “sometimes” or “frequently,” as per a survey by Snyk. But the issue could worsen, as 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants by 2028, according to Gartner.