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Unlike in other years, this year’s Microsoft Build developer conference is not packed with huge surprises — but there’s one announcement that will surely make developers’ ears perk up: The company is now using OpenAI’s massive GPT-3 natural language model in its no-code/low-code Power Apps service to translate spoken text into code in its recently […]
Microsoft has built an AI-powered autocomplete for code using GPT-3
The tool has a small scope but big potential
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In September 2020, Microsoft purchased an exclusive license to the underlying technology behind GPT-3, an AI language tool built by OpenAI. Now, the Redmond, Washington-based tech giant has announced its first commercial use case for the program: an assistive feature in the company’s PowerApps software that turns natural language into readymade code.
The feature is limited in its scope and can only produce formulas in Microsoft Power Fx, a simple programming language derived from Microsoft Excel formulas that’s used mainly for database queries. But it shows the huge potential for machine learning to help novice programmers by functioning as an autocomplete tool for code.
All-natural? We tried.
For those wondering why Microsoft did not simply go the whole hog and opt for an all-natural-language approach, skipping the Power FX scripting part, Lamanna admitted it had been tried, but was just not effective enough for us to ever release it.
As for preparing the model to allow the parsing to occur, Lamanna said the approach was twofold. First, the software had to be engineered to translate normal words we use everyday into Power Fx formulas. There s just the language itself [Power Fx] and expressions, he said, along with the Common Data Model Microsoft is keen on customers using.