Alibaba Cloud introduces a groundbreaking AI programmer at the Cloud AI Summit in Shanghai, promising accelerated software development. The new ‘multi-intelligence agent’ aims to streamline tasks traditionally handled by software engineers, sparking mixed reactions in the developer community.
At the Cloud AI summit in Shanghai, Alibaba Cloud introduced an advanced AI programmer designed to accelerate the development of software applications. Xu Dong, general manager of Alibaba Cloud’s Tongyi Qianwen LLM service, announced the new tool on Friday. The AI programmer, described as a “multi-intelligence agent,” performs roles typically handled by software architects, development engineers, and test engineers.
According to Alibaba Cloud, this innovation allows developers to create applications swiftly, sometimes reducing development time to minutes. During the summit, a live demonstration showcased the AI programmer completing an application from scratch in just 10 minutes—tasks that traditionally might take up to half a day.
The tool offers functionalities including code writing, testing, debugging, and deployment through interactive user conversations. However, human programmers have mixed reactions. Developers like Liang Yan expressed concerns about potential job threats and the loss of understanding in the development process. Meanwhile, Yang Yi highlighted reliability issues, noting that the generated code can contain errors.
The AI programmer follows the earlier release of Tongyi Lingma, another AI coding assistant from Alibaba Cloud. Tongyi Lingma, trained on open-source code, can generate, test, and debug code based on natural language instructions. The basic version of Tongyi Lingma is free for individual users, while the corporate version is available for a monthly fee.
The AI programmer is not yet publicly available, and pricing details remain undisclosed.
