GitHub's Copilot lies about its documentation. Why would I trust it with my code

When IDEs first emerged in the world of web development, many developers proudly claimed that a simple text editor was all they needed. For them, saying &quot;I&#x27;m using Notepad &#x2F; VIM&quot; became a badge of honor, symbolizing their minimalist approach.<p>Today, I sense a similar mindset among those who oppose AI assistants in software development. They tend to focus on the perceived limitations of these tools, often failing to see the bigger picture of how AI can enhance productivity. Instead, they quickly latch onto any shortcoming to justify their resistance, missing the potential long-term benefits.

-&gt; GitHub&#x27;s Copilot lies about its documentation. Why would I trust it with my code<p>This is the biggest misconception people have about AI. You shouldn&#x27;t trust a Copilot by default, but more often than not it will be very handy if you know what you do.

Is it surprising that asking a coding tool that writes code to manipulate its own settings in a way it was not built to do produces bad output? Can you ask your Google Home to delete your Google account? Or tell Siri to turn off Hey Siri?

I mean, even if you live coding assistants and use them often (I frequently consult sonnet on random things I can’t remember how to do off the top of my head)…<p>…you <i>have</i> to admit that this is just outrageously shit.<p>Come <i>on</i><p>You’re sending a response from a <i>help bot</i> to a user <i>with a url in it</i> and you didn’t bother to add a check to make sure the links it returns <i>actually exist</i>.<p>That’s just lazy. I wouldn’t want to use it either.<p>I don’t.<p>Or any product where the developers have been in such a rush to pour AI into their products that they’ve failed to integrate it in a way that is useful and meaningful.<p>It doesn’t seem like such a big ask.<p>If you’re integrating AI and you’re not doing the most basic output sanitation… you deserve responses like this.<p>From github? With their resources and experience? It’s a fuxking disgrace.

This is a bad faith argument, OP is looking for reasons to distrust Copilot. Let&#x27;s say Copilot returned a correct link. Would OP then decide it&#x27;s worth trusting Copilot with their code? I doubt it. That&#x27;s a horrible proof of trust. It really feels like the <i>only</i> outcome of this &#x27;test&#x27; is that copilot can prove itself untrustworthy.

It will be interesting to see as years go on how the aging population that get so worked up over LLM coding tools are doing. The new generations are for the most part embracing it with open arms and no discrimination. I see the many flaws in these tool but I still find them useful. Maybe there is a plateau but if they continue to improve these tools can be incredible force multipliers.

I also find their new UI changes devoid of taste. Really? Putting a stupid chatbot button where the notifications button usually is? <i>Fuck</i> you.<p>I will some day in the near future migrate my projects off of GitHub. It was nice having a centralized place for open source projects for a while, though; a lot more people saw stuff I was working on than otherwise would if I just had a cgit instance running somewhere. But that&#x27;s okay: the point of me publishing it wasn&#x27;t for other people to see, necessarily.<p>And I&#x27;m sure eventually there will be another anyway. I certainly remember how Sourceforge went downhill.

Bing chat does something similar. It suggests going to the settings for the unrelated, now-defunct product also called bing chat. These settings no longer exist and there is no way to turn it off.

Can it lie if it doesn’t have a concept of true and false?

I feel like there should be more malice behind a lie.

You clearly need to don&#x27;t understand how Ai currently works. It predicts the next most likely word.<p>With code it does the same thing and its prediction skills aren&#x27;t tuned by humans perfectly yet.

&gt;GitHub has forced its new Copilot button on to every page.<p>Um, no. Not so for me. No copilot at all. Guess we shouldn&#x27;t trust you either ;)

...and the AI zealots will insist that there is nothing wrong with these systems spouting disinformation like this, as it&#x27;s just a speed bump on the road to progress.

“One of my intern developers can’t tell me the URL of their own latest blog post, why would I trust a different intern to write code without supervision or review?”