IBM's CodeNet dataset can teach AI to translate computer languages

AI and machine learning systems have become increasingly competent in recent years, capable of not just understanding the written word but writing it as well. But while these artificial intelligences have nearly mastered the English language, they have yet to become fluent in the language of computers -- that is, until now. IBM announced during its Think 2021 conference on Monday that its researchers have crafted a Rosetta Stone for programming code. Over the past decade, advancements in AI have mainly been "driven by deep neural networks, and even that, it was driven by three major factors: data with the availability of large data sets for training, innovations in new algorithms, and the massive acceleration of faster and faster compute hardware driven by GPUs," Ruchir Puri, IBM Fellow and Chief Scientist at IBM Research, said during his Think 2021 presentation, likening the new data set to the venerated ImageNet, which has spawned the recent computer vision land rush. "Software is eating the world," Marc Andreessen wrote in 2011.