Is GitHub Copilot a blessing, or a curse? · fast.ai

GitHub Copilot is a new service from GitHub and OpenAI, described as “Your AI pair programmer”. It is a plugin to Visual Studio Code which auto-generates code for you based on the contents of the current file, and your current cursor location.

It really feels quite magical to use. For example, here I’ve typed the name and docstring of a function which should “Write text to file fname”:

The grey body of the function has been entirely written for me by Copilot! I just hit Tab on my keyboard, and the suggestion gets accepted and inserted into my code.

This is certainly not the first “AI powered” program synthesis tool. GitHub’s Natural Language Semantic Code Search in 2018 demonstrated finding code examples using plain English descriptions. Tabnine has provided “AI powered” code completion for a few years now. Where Copilot differs is that it can generate entire multi-line functions and even documentation and tests, based on the full context of a file of code.

This is particularly exciting for us at fast.ai because it holds the promise that it may lower the barrier to coding, which would greatly help us in our mission. Therefore, I was particularly keen to dive into Copilot. However, as we’ll see, I’m not yet convinced that Copilot is actually a blessing. It may even turn out to be a curse.

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