2022.12.26 - What's next for AI

Title: 2022.12.26 – What’s Next for AI

The End of Programming & The Year in Computer Science & Second Brain & 伤寒论序

This Week’s Hot Topics

What’s next for AI https://www.technologyreview.com/2022/12/23/1065852/whats-next-for-ai/ Get a head start with our four big bets for 2023.

The End of Programming https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2023/1/267976-the-end-of-programming/fulltext Programming will become obsolete. I believe the conventional notion of “writing a program” is headed for extinction, and for all but very specialized applications most software, as we know it, will be replaced by AI systems that are trained rather than programmed. When a “simple” program is needed (after all, not everything should require a model with hundreds of billions of parameters running on a GPU cluster), those programs will themselves be generated by AI instead of being hand‑coded.

From models‑to‑code to models‑to‑prompts: the next MDE revolution? https://modeling-languages.com/models-to-code-models-to-prompts/ Like many of you, I’ve been playing with ChatGPT. I’ve tried using it to generate code and models from simple prompts, with impressive but mixed results. ChatGPT will NOT definitively replace programmers—let alone modelers—but it may still revolutionize software development, especially model‑driven development. In this post I explain how.

The Year in Computer Science https://www.quantamagazine.org/the-biggest-discoveries-in-computer-science-in-2022-20221221/ This year computer scientists learned how to transmit perfect secrets, why transformers seem so good at everything, and how to improve decades‑old algorithms (with a little help from AI).

Apple, Google, and Mozilla are teaming up to make a next‑gen browser benchmark https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/16/23511461/apple-google-mozilla-chrome-safari-firefox-browser-speedtest-3 Apple, Google, and Mozilla—the makers of Safari, Chrome, and Firefox—are collaborating on a next‑generation browser benchmark called Speedometer 3, according to tweets from all three companies. This means the major players in the web‑browser and rendering‑engine space will have a say in a benchmark designed to test how their apps perform with the latest web technologies.

In‑Depth Reading

Dangerous examples of technical debt in rich‑text editors https://www.tiny.cloud/blog/technical-debt-examples/ In an ideal world, the technical debt in your project is intentional and controllable. But rich‑text editors are complex beasts that exist in an ever‑changing environment—so one of the biggest dangers to their development is environmental technical debt.

2022 Roundup of Web Research https://css-tricks.com/2022-roundup-of-web-research/ Last year, the overarching trend seemed to be remote work and its impact on developer productivity and workplace environments. We also saw Tailwind CSS continue to explode in usage, dismal accessibility on the top 1 million websites, and massive growth in API usage, among other findings. So what’s in store for this year? Read on to find out.

Bad performance is bad accessibility https://brucelawson.co.uk/2022/bad-performance-is-bad-accessibility/ What is “accessibility”? For some, it’s about ensuring your sites and apps don’t block people with disabilities from completing tasks. That’s the core, but in my view it’s not the whole story. Accessibility means developing digital services that are as inclusive as possible—inclusive of people with disabilities, of people outside Euro‑centric cultures, and of people who don’t have top‑of‑the‑line hardware or always‑on fast networks.

WebAssembly: Docker without containers! https://wasmlabs.dev/articles/docker-without-containers/ This article explains what WebAssembly is, why it matters to the Docker ecosystem, and provides hands‑on examples. We assume you’re familiar with Docker tooling. We’ll use our work on the WebAssembly port of PHP to demonstrate building a PHP interpreter, packaging it as part of an OCI image, and running it with Docker.

Comprehensive Rust https://google.github.io/comprehensive-rust/ A four‑day Rust course developed by the Android team. It covers the full spectrum of Rust, from basic syntax to advanced topics like generics and error handling, and includes Android‑specific material on the final day.

Circuit Breakers https://architecturenotes.co/circuit-breakers/ Circuit breakers are a vital component of any distributed system, improving reliability and resilience by preventing failures from cascading and causing widespread damage.

Copilot Internals https://thakkarparth007.github.io/copilot-explorer/posts/copilot-internals.html In this post I try to answer specific questions about Copilot’s internals while sharing interesting observations from digging through the code. I provide pointers to the relevant source for almost everything I discuss, so interested readers can explore the code themselves.

Fresh Finds

Tencent Weixin now partners with GitHub to notify users if their credentials are exposed in a public repository ChatGPT will not replace programmers, but Search Engines should be worried The Best of React Status in 2022 Storybook 7.0 beta Visualizing 11 years of GitLab contributions

Products & Others

Product vs. Policy https://www.svpg.com/product-vs-policy/ Most people today understand that “product” is meant in a very holistic sense. It’s not just the code, not just the UI, not just the app—it reflects the full customer experience, both online and offline, both customer‑facing and customer‑enabling.

How top companies are handling virtual wellness https://blog.superhuman.com/virtual-wellness/ How do you maintain well‑being and spot potential problems in a remote workforce? How can you ensure employees have a positive relationship with the technology they need to do their jobs? Let’s discuss promoting virtual wellness and look at companies that are getting it right.

This is the year of the RSS reader. (Really!) https://www.niemanlab.org/2022/12/this-is-the-year-of-the-rss-reader-really/ With Twitter use becoming increasingly like smoking—a habit you can’t quit but know you should—there’s a chance that a better RSS reader will finally get its moment.

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Originally written by Ping Xia (平侠) and published in Chinese on Web技术周刊 (Web Tech Weekly). Translated and adapted for DriftSeas with permission.