The Microsoft Build developer conference today, the company's chief technology officer, Kevin Scott, demonstrated an AI helper for the game Minecraft. The non-player character within the game is powered by the same machine learning technology Microsoft has been testing for auto-generating software code.

Figure 1: An AI helper for the game Minecraft by auto generating code.

Figure 1 shows that the feat hints at how recent advances in AI could change personal computing in years to come by replacing interfaces that you tap, type, and click to navigate into interfaces that you simply have a conversation with. [1]

The Minecraft agent responds appropriately to typed commands by converting them into working code behind the scenes using the software API for the game. The AI model that controls the bot was trained on vast amounts of code and natural language text, then shown the API specifications for Minecraft, along with a few usage examples. When a player tells it to “come here,” for instance, the underlying AI model will generate the code needed to have the agent move toward the player.

In the demo shown at Build, the bot was also able to perform more complex tasks, like retrieving items and combining them to make something new. And because the model was trained on natural language as well as code, it can even respond to simple questions about how to build things. [2]

Microsoft has built an AI coding tool called Copilot on top of the same technology. It automatically suggests code when a developer starts typing, or in response to the comments added to a piece of code.

Scott says Copilot is the first instance of what will likely be a slew of “AI-first” products in the coming years, from Microsoft and others. Code-writing AI “lets you think about doing software development in a different way—so you can express an intention for something that you want to accomplish,” he says.

The Minecraft bot was built using an AI model called Codex that was developed by Open AI. Codex was trained on natural language text scraped from the web, as well as billions of lines of code from GitHub, a popular repository for software owned by Microsoft.

The Minecraft demo could inspire similar concerns. But Scott says the feedback on Copilot has been largely positive, suggesting that it simply automates more tedious coding tasks. “If you talk to a developer who actually uses a Copilot, they’ll say ‘this is such a great tool,’” he says. [3]

References:

1. https://cacm.acm.org/news/261530-minecrafts-code-writing-ai-points-to-the-future-of-computers/fulltext
2. https://www.wired.com/story/minecraft-ai-code-microsoft/
3. https://vervetimes.com/microsofts-code-writing-ai-points-to-the-future-of-computers/

Cite this article:

Sri Vasagi K (2022), Microsoft Testing AI Auto Generated Software Code for Future, AnaTechMaz, pp.112