OpenAI CodexOpenAI has created an improved version of OpenAI Codex, it is an AI system that translates natural language to code.

For several years, there has been a lot of discussion around AI’s capabilities. Many believe that AI will outperform humans in solving certain areas. As the innovation is at its outset, scientists are anticipating human-like independent frameworks in the following coming years. OpenAI has a main position in the computerized reasoning exploration space. Established in December 2015, the organization will probably progress advanced knowledge in a manner that can help mankind in general. Since its exploration is liberated from monetary commitments, OpenAI can all the more likely spotlight a positive human effect. This AI system translates natural language to code, and OpenAI is releasing it through its API in private beta. Codex is the model that powers GitHub Copilot, which was built and launched in partnership with GitHub in July 2021. Proficient in more than a dozen programming languages, Codex can now interpret simple commands in natural language and execute them on the user’s behalf making it possible to build a natural language interface to existing applications. Businesses and developers are now invited to build on top of OpenAI Codex through the API.

OpenAI Codex is a descendant of GPT-3; its training data contains both natural language and billions of lines of source code from publicly available sources, including code in public GitHub repositories. OpenAI Codex is most capable in Python, but it is also proficient in over a dozen languages including JavaScript, Go, Perl, PHP, Ruby, Swift and TypeScript, and even Shell. It has a memory of 14KB for Python code, compared to GPT-3 which has only 4KB—so it can take into account over 3x as much contextual information while performing any task.

GPT-3’s main skill is generating natural language in response to a natural language prompt, meaning the only way it affects the world is through the mind of the reader. OpenAI Codex has much of the natural language understanding of GPT-3, but it produces working code—meaning you can issue commands in English to any piece of software with an API. OpenAI Codex empowers computers to better understand people’s intent, which can empower everyone to do more with computers.

Once a programmer knows what to build, the act of writing code can be thought of as:

  1. Breaking a problem down into simpler problems
  2. Mapping those simple problems to existing code (libraries, APIs, or functions) that already exist. 

The latter activity is probably the least fun part of programming (and the highest barrier to entry), and it’s where OpenAI Codex excels most.

OpenAI Codex is a general-purpose programming model, meaning that it can be applied to essentially any programming task (though results may vary). This has been successfully used for transpilation, explaining code, and refactoring code. 

On its announcement page, OpenAI says that it is releasing the API for Codex in a private beta to start and also notes that the company is inviting developers and businesses to give it a try. They also note that as a general-purpose programming tool, Codex can be used for virtually any programming task.