Insider Brief
- Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit has launched its first “AI programmer”.
- Developers have not been uniformly pleased by the new product.
- Some developers worry about job replacement and that reliability.
PRESS RELEASE — Alibaba Group Holding’s cloud unit has launched its first “AI programmer,” receiving mixed reviews from users, according to the South China Morning Post (SCMP).
Introduced by Alibaba Cloud, the AI programmer aims to significantly reduce development time for applications, potentially down to minutes, the company announced on Friday. This follows the launch of Tongyi Lingma, Alibaba Cloud’s first AI coding assistant, seven months ago.
The AI programmer, designed as a “multi-intelligence agent,” integrates roles such as software architect, development engineer, and test engineer to deliver end-to-end product functionality. At the Cloud AI summit in Shanghai, Xu Dong, general manager of Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen LLM service, highlighted the shifting paradigm in software development, stating that users will soon be able to complete application development in minutes by merely identifying problems and expressing requirements.
However, the AI programmer’s reception has been mixed among developers, according to SCMP. Liang Yan, a developer in the cryptocurrency industry, expressed concerns about job security and the potential loss of a deeper understanding of programming, which he considers crucial for learning and innovation. He emphasized that while the AI tool may save time, it could hinder programmers’ comprehension of their work.
Yang Yi, a developer at a Chinese Big Tech company, told the newspaper that while AI coding tools like the AI programmer can reduce workload, they are not yet entirely reliable, often producing code with errors. He pointed out that these tools are still in their early stages of development.
The AI programmer’s launch follows the introduction of Tongyi Lingma, which is powered by the Tongyi Qianwen LLM and trained on open-source code. Tongyi Lingma can generate code based on natural language instructions, run unit tests, and debug and optimize code. It offers a basic version free for individual users, while the corporate version costs 159 yuan (US$22) per person per month, with a minimum of 100 users.
Currently, the new AI programmer targets both individual and corporate developers but is not yet publicly available, with pricing details yet to be disclosed, as reported by SCMP.
