Programming Proves to Be Profitable Application of GenAI Technology

While generative artificial intelligence is not yet making money in some fields, it has reportedly quickly proven its value in powering coding assistants.

One AI coding assistant, the Microsoft-owned GitHub Copilot, has drawn nearly 2 million paying subscribers since its launch in 2022 and contributed to a 45% year-over-year increase in GitHub’s revenue, the Financial Times reported Friday (Aug. 23).

“When using GPT-3, OpenAI’s first major model, we figured out relatively quickly that it was so good at writing code that we could build a product around this,” GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke said in the report.

Amazon, Meta and Google have also built AI assistants for writing and editing code, according to the report.

Several startups are also competing in this field, including Replit, Anysphere, Magic, Augment, Supermaven and Poolside AI. These companies have raised $906 million since January 2023, including $433 million so far in 2024, the report said.

McKinsey said in 2023 that AI could boost the productivity of software engineering by 20% to 45%, per the report.

The report said coding copilots have delivered clear time to value and value-add; at least one company will stop hiring people who code without AI by the end of the year; the demand for programming will go up as the task becomes easier; and software engineers have already integrated these assistants into their workflow, saying AI handles repetitive tasks and frees them up to be more creative.

“At this point, software engineering without AI is a little bit like writing without a word processor,” Code.org CEO Hadi Partovi said, per the report.

Using generative AI solutions to streamline software development workflows can accelerate digital transformation, PYMNTS reported in November.

The benefits of having AI-generated code on hand can’t be overstated at a time when many companies are undertaking system enhancements across areas like accounts payable and accounts receivable.

“Simply put, generative AI can write your code for you,” Bob Rogers, CEO of Oii.ai, a supply-chain AI company, told PYMNTS in an interview posted in May. “Programming is a language, and generative AI honestly doesn’t mind switching from English to Spanish to Python or JavaScript, and it’s fluent in all of them.”

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