Wednesday, August 11, 2021

OpenAI Codex - A New Brand of No-Code

A few days ago OpenAI (www.openai.com) announced the release of a new version of OpenAI Codex, their Al system that translates natural language statements into program code. Now you can use English to describe what you want your software project to do, and OpenAl’s Al model will automatically generate the corresponding computer code, in whatever programming language you choose. 

OpenAI Codex is a "descendent" of GPT-3 (a neural network machine learning model) and is capable of producing code in Python, JavaScript, Go, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Swift and TypeScript. Codex is basically a version of GPT-3, but one that has been trained on program code instead of ordinary text material. That allows Codex to do things like complete lines of code or entire routines, but originally it wasn't truly a tool the non-coders could easily use.

That’s changed with the new API version, which interprets everyday requests like “make the ball bounce off the sides of the screen” or “download this data using the public API and sort it by date,” and creates working program code in any one of a dozen languages. Also, in addition to being "fluent" in a variety of coding languages, the fact that Codex is trained on pretty much all the public code on GitHub (and other repositories), means it’s aware of standard practices in coding. 

Because of its ability to handle Natural Language processing, Codex can be used to interact with other software, to perform functions within that software that aren't built into the application. OpenAI also says that Codex can convert or "translate" code from one programming language to another, providing code portability. 

Right now Codex is only available to a select group of beta testers. Once, its made available to a wider segment of the public I'll attempt to get a copy and work out an actual example or two. Until then, Codex may be a product to keep a close eye on. 

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