  • [2]Home
  • [3]About
  • [4]Tags
  • [5]Bookmarks
  • [6]Photos
  • [7]Podcasts
  • [8]Music
  • [9]Software
  • [10]Mastodon
  • [11]Talks
  • [12]Web Archives
  • [13]Feed
  • [14]🎁

Why I don't use Copilot

June 4, 2023
[15]programming [16]artificial-intelligence

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

TL;DR Don’t install Copilot. It rots your brain and destroys the environment.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
[rubber-duc] [17]A rubber duck in use by a developer to aid code review

[18]GitHub Copilot is a technology that is designed to help you write code,
kind of like your partner in [19]pair programming. But, you know, it’s not an
actual person. It’s “A.I.”–whatever that means.

In principle this sounds like it might actually be a good thing right? I know
several people, who I respect, that use it as part of their daily work. I’ve
heard [20]smart people say AI coding assistants like Copilot will democratize
programming, by making it possible for more people to write code, and automate
the drudgery out of their lives. I’m not convinced.

Here’s why I don’t use Copilot (or ChatGPT) to write code:

 1. Copilot’s suggestions are based on a corpus of open source code in GitHub,
    but the suggestions do not mention where the code came from, and what the
    license is. GitHub is stealing and selling intellectual property.
 2. Copilot lets you write code faster. I don’t think more code is a good
    thing. The more code there is, the more code there is to maintain.
    Minimalism in features is usually a good thing too. Less really is more.
 3. As more and more programmers use Copilot it creates conservativism in
    languages and frameworks that prevents people from creating and learning
    new ways of doing things. Collectively, we get even more stuck in our ways
    and biases. Some of the biases encoded into LLMs are things that we are
    actively trying to [21]change.
 4. Developers become dependent on Copilot for intellectual work. Actually,
    maybe addicted is a better word here. The same could be (and was) said
    about the effect of search engines on software development work
    (e.g. Googling error messages). But the difference is that search results
    need to be interpreted, and the resulting web pages have important context
    that you often need to understand. This is work that Copilot optimizes away
    and truncates our knowledge in the process.
 5. Copilot costs money. It doesn’t cost tons of money (for a professional
    person in the USA) but it could be significant for some. Who does it
    privilege? Also, it could change (see point 4). Remember who owns this
    thing.
 6. How much [22]energy does it take to run Copilot as millions of developers
    outsource their intellectual work to its LLM infrastructure? Is this
    massive centralization and enclosure really progress in computing? Or is it
    a [23]step backwards as we try to [24]reduce our energy use as a species?
 7. What does Copilot see of the code in your editor? Does it use your code as
    context for the prompt? What does it store, and remember, and give to
    others? Somebody has probably looked into this, but if they have it is
    always up for revision. Just out of principle I don’t want my editor
    sending my code somewhere else without me intentionally doing it.
 8. Working with others who use Copilot makes my job harder, since they
    sometimes don’t really understand the details of why the code is written a
    particular way. Over time Copilot code can mix idioms, styles and
    approaches, in ways that the developer doesn’t really understand or even
    recognize. This makes maintenance harder.

As far as I can tell the only redeeming qualities of Copilot are:

 1. Copilot encourages you to articulate and describe a problem as written
    prose before starting to write code. You don’t need Copilot for this. Maybe
    keep a work journal or write a [25]design document? Maybe use your issue
    tracker? Use [26]text to communicate with other people.
 2. Copilot is more interactive than a [27]rubber duck. But, it turns out
    Actual People are even more interactive and surprising. Reach out to other
    professionals and make some friends. Go to workshops and conferences.
 3. I could be convinced that Copilot has a useful place in the [28]review of
    code rather than the first draft of code. It wouldn’t be a replacement for
    review by people, but I believe it could potentially help people do the
    review. I don’t think this exists yet?
 4. Copilot makes me think critically about machine learning technology, my
    profession and its place in the world.

Maybe my thinking on this will change. But I doubt it. I’m on the older side
for a software developer, and (hopefully) will retire some day. Maybe people
like me are on the way out, and writing code with Copilot and ChatGPT is the
future. Maybe programming has always been about increasing layers of
abstraction and this is just the next logical layer. I really hope not.

I enjoy programming because it’s about reasoning, thinking, models, concepts,
expression, communication, ethics, reading, learning, making, and process. It’s
an art and a practice that is best done with other people.

Increasingly I think it’s imperative for programming to be done more slowly,
more deliberatively, and as part of more conversations with more people. The
furious automation of everything is eating the world.

Programs need to run more efficiently. Programs need to be well understood, by
a more diverse and varied set of people. Programs need to be robust and
resilient. Programs need to be easier to change.

Can Copilot help with these [29]goals? I think the answer is no, because it
doesn’t actually understand anything, and more importantly, it doesn’t promote
understanding.

━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━

Update (2023-06-09): For another take on Copilot that uses this post as a
jumping off point see Vivek Haldar’s [30]Re: Why I don’t use Copilot.

Unless otherwise noted all the content here is licensed [31]CC-BY


References:

[2] https://inkdroid.org/
[3] https://inkdroid.org/about/
[4] https://inkdroid.org/tags/
[5] http://pinboard.in/u:edsu
[6] https://www.flickr.com/photos/inkdroid
[7] https://inkdroid.org/podcasts/feed.opml
[8] https://bandcamp.com/edsu
[9] https://github.com/edsu
[10] https://social.coop/@edsu
[11] https://inkdroid.org/talks/
[12] https://inkdroid.org/web-archives/archives/
[13] https://inkdroid.org/feed.xml
[14] https://bookshop.org/wishlists/d7c0224f5440df8d2c174ad2cc38b3fca1aa813f
[15] https://inkdroid.org/tag/programming
[16] https://inkdroid.org/tag/artificial-intelligence
[17] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Rubber_duck_assisting_with_debugging.jpg
[18] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot
[19] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pair_programming
[20] https://changelog.com/podcast/534
[21] https://www.wired.com/story/tech-confronts-use-labels-master-slave/
[22] https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3442188.3445922
[23] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/05/chatgpt-hidden-cost-gpu-compute/
[24] https://www.jasonhickel.org/less-is-more
[25] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_design_description
[26] https://graydon2.dreamwidth.org/193447.html
[27] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging
[28] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_review
[29] https://permacomputing.net/
[30] https://vivekhaldar.com/articles/re--why-i-don-t-use-copilot/
[31] https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
