Microsoft, the company which owns GitHub, has announced that the entire GitHub platform is being re-branded and "re-founded" based on ChatGPT-based Artificial Intelligence. Seriously.
GitHub, founded in 2008 as a hosted option for Git-based source control, has become a critical piece of infrastructure in the open source world -- with over 370 Million repositories. A massive success. Now, in 2023, Microsoft feels that the way forward is to make everything about AI -- specifically using their "Copilot" brand of AI.
"Just as GitHub was founded on Git, today we are re-founding on Copilot," stated Thomas Dohmke, GitHub CEO. "We are infusing copilot into every aspect of GitHub."
According to the announcement, Microsoft has a new vision for what "software development" will look like going forward:
"A new future of software development with Copilot X, where AI infuses every step of the developer lifecycle."
Artificial Intelligence. Infused in every step of software development.
Every. Single. Step.
And, looking at the announced feature set and (incredibly drastic) changes planned for GitHub... Microsoft clearly means it.
Before we go any further, I would like to take a moment to quote a single sentence from the official announcement. A sentence that, just may be the single stupidest sentence ever written in a press release. At the very least... it's in the running.
"Coding is the centerpiece of the software development lifecycle."
Coding? A centerpiece of making... software? You don't say!
Ok, moving on.
Here are a few other key quotes from the announcement to give you some idea of just how sweeping this change is planned to be:
"With GitHub Copilot Chat we’re enabling the rise of natural language as the new universal programming language for every developer on the planet."
That's right. The idea is that a ChatGPT varient is intended to be the "universal programming language" for "every developer on the planet".
"We’re integrating GitHub Copilot Chat directly into github.com."
Right into the website. But, wait! That's not all!
"With Copilot in the code editor, in the CLI, and now Copilot Chat on github.com and in our mobile app, we are making Copilot ubiquitous throughout the software development lifecycle and always available in all of GitHub’s surface areas."
If there is a way you can interact with GitHub... you'll be using the "Copilot AI". End of story. That's the future.
Think you'll get around this by using the command line? Nope. Microsoft is making the CLI all about AI now too.
A few thoughts from the desk of The Lunduke Journal:
- There is current, ongoing legal action being taken against Microsoft for their usage of copyrighted code -- which they do not have the rights or license to utilize commercially -- in the training of their "Copilot" AI. The outcome of which could drastically alter this new GitHub "re-founding" as an AI platform.
- The idea of "every developer" on Eearth making softawre using entirely AI chat software sounds like a horrifying future of terrible softare.
- Microsoft is taking a known, established system (GitHub) and -- effectively -- putting it all on the line. They are betting the entire future success of GitHub on an unproven idea of "AI writing all software".
- Part of the goal here, as stated by Microsoft, is to have programmers... spend less time programming. As they say, "developers often write code only around 2 hours a day"... and the goal of this new system is not to give developers more development time... but to make those 2 hours more "productive" with an AI Chatbot. Thus allowing developers to spend even less time programming. Instead of fixing the problem, Microsoft has a goal of making it worse.
The next round of these changes will appear in December. It will be interesting to see how the programmers of the world react.
