Github Copilot has become a paid service 😩

WHAT IS GITHUB COPILOT ?

For developers who live on another planet 🙄 and those who are not in thedevelopment 😁, GitHub Copilot is an artificial intelligence tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI to help users of Visual Studio Code integrated development environments, Visual Studio, Neovim and JetBrains by automatically completing code.

The platform is also very useful for learning to code in a new language, and allows you to try new things, with the assurance of progressing thanks to the suggestions of syntax and code suggestions.

Introduced a year ago, Github's programming help software is now open to everyone. There are still many unanswered questions about its capabilities. "Your programming partner is here," Github announced in a press release on June 21, 2022. This is not just any partner, but Github Copilot, a software programming aid software powered by artificial intelligence. Its promise is as simple as it is revolutionary: Copilot could help developers to code by proposing them, all by itself, lines of by proposing lines of code all by itself.

A year after its public presentation, Copilot, which was developed by the specialized in hosting code projects, Github and OpenAI, is available to everyone.Copilot was until now reserved for testers: more than 1.2 million developers had registered and for almost a year evaluated the software's prowess.

Copilot works in a simple way: "When you type in lines of code or comments, Copilot suggests the next comments, Copilot suggests the next line," says Github. "It's not just about a single word or line-Copilot can suggest entire methods, standard code formulas, test paragraphs of standard code, entire test paragraphs and even complex algorithms."

SOME CONCERNS ABOUT GITHUB COPILOT

1. The ethical and legal problem

The general principle of this AI poses a legal and ethical problem because Github has used the available on its platform. The problem is that the code available on the platform is not necessarily free to use and one can wonder if Github has the right to exploit the repository code hosted on its platform in the framework of such a such a project.

This also poses a problem for the user who could be suggested pieces of code that would be under license without knowing it.

2. Telemetry

If we read the frequently asked questions, Github specifies that a part of your code is sent to their server to be used as context for intelligence.

The problem is that if you are working on a file that contains sensitive data, this data could  end up on Github’s servers and could be exploited by someone exploited by someone with bad intentions.

3. A generated code that doesn't always meet our expectations

For all that, it is stressed that GitHub Copilot does not write perfect code. "The wizard is designed to generate the best possible code given the context it has access to, but it doesn't test the code it suggests, so it doesn't always work or make sense."

GitHub Copilot is based on a Codex language model designed by OpenAI. This has been trained with publicly available source code, but also natural language. It's not just about human language is part of it.

According to GitHub (in the Microsoft fold) and for files where the assistant is enabled, 40% of newly written code is the work of GitHub Copilot. There has been some controversy regarding the legality of training AI with public code on GitHub, while the presence of security vulnerabilities in the suggested code questioned.

PAID VERSION 🤨

Towards the end of June 2022, GitHub Copilot became paid at a rate of $ 10 per month or $ 100 per year per user (with an individual GitHub account). However, a 60-day free trial is offered.

Initially launched as a technical preview, more than 1.2 million developers have registered for access during the registered for access over the past 12 months, with the majority of them now using Copilot in now use Copilot in their daily work.

MY CONCLUSION

Personally, on the whole, I like the tool very much, despite the advantages stated above. However, I am an avid user of open source projects 😗, I was sad to learn that GitHub Copilot became paid 😨. I had gained some productivity thanks to the suggestions proposed by the tool.