Github Copilot: Should you be concerned?

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past couple of weeks, you’ve heard of Github Copilot, Github’s AI code suggester powered by OpenAI. Even without being officially released, Copilot has sparked intense debate, concern, and excitement from all corners of the dev world.

It’s worth noting, however, that this isn’t even the first AI Code suggested (see Tabnine or Kite), but is probably just the most novel one. Nevertheless, many younger developers have expressed anxiety over whether their jobs are at risk of being automated out by Copilot and whether the type of coding that they’re practicing will soon be obsolete.

The most important aspect to realize about Copilot is that it’s called Copilot, not Autopilot. On the Copilot homepage, Github admits that “the code it suggests may not always work, or even make sense”.

Copilot is a developer tool, not a developer. Just as using ReactJS is useless if you don’t know HTML and CSS, using Copilot is useless if you don’t actually know how to code. You’re going to need to review and verify every line that Copilot spits out regardless, so the most it can do is save you time, not replace you.

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