Turns out machine learning is a champ at fixing buggy code

Here's yet another new application of machine learning: MIT has developed a system for fixing errors in bug-riddled code. The new machine-learning system developed by researchers at MIT can fix roughly 10 times as many errors as its predecessors could, the researchers say. They presented a paper describing the new system, dubbed "Prophet," at the Principles of Programming Languages symposium last month. Essentially, the system works by studying patches already made to open-source computer programs in the past in order to learn their general properties. Prophet was given 777 errors and fixes in eight common open-source applications stored in the online repository GitHub.