Now for AI's Latest Trick: Writing Computer Code

It can take years to learn how to write computer code well. SourceAI, a Paris startup, thinks programming shouldn't be such a big deal. The company is fine-tuning a tool that uses artificial intelligence to write code based on a short text description of what the code should do. Tell the company's tool to "multiply two numbers given by a user," for example, and it will whip up a dozen or so lines in Python to do just that. SourceAI's ambitions are a sign of a broader revolution in software development.