Microsoft's AI 'DeepCoder' learns coding by stealing from others

Researchers at Microsoft and Cambridge University have built a highly sophisticated computer called DeepCoder that can now allow machines to write their own programs. This is aimed to make job easier for users who don't know programming languages well enough to use them efficiently, or even help people having no experience in writing simple coding programs. "All of a sudden people could be so much more productive," says Armando Solar-Lezama at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who was not involved in the work. "They could build systems that it [would be]impossible to build before." The paper, DeepCoder: Learning to Write Programs, is a basic system with some limitations according to the researchers.