When something goes wrong with an AI assistant, our instinct is to ask it directly: "What happened?" It's a natural impulse--after all, if a human makes a mistake, we ask them to explain. But with AI models, this approach rarely works, and the urge to ask reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what these systems are and how they operate. A recent incident with Replit's AI coding assistant perfectly illustrates this problem. When the AI tool deleted a production database, user Jason Lemkin asked it about rollback capabilities.

With new partnership, Replit's 20M developers now get access to Google Cloud services, infrastructure, and foundation models, further reducing the time from idea to live software on Replit SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 28, 2023 -- Leading cloud software development platform Replit today announced a new strategic partnership with Google Cloud. Under the new partnership, Replit developers will now get access to Google Cloud infrastructure, services, and foundation models via Ghostwriter, Replit's software development AI, while Google Cloud and Workspace developers will get access to Replit's collaborative code editing platform. The collaboration will accelerate the creation of generative AI applications and underscores Google Cloud's commitment to nurturing the most open ecosystem for generative AI. For Replit, already 20 million developers strong, this partnership with Google Cloud is its next move in realizing its mission to empower the next 1 billion software creators. AI is changing software development.

The big news this week was a call from tech luminaries to pause development and deployment of AI models more advanced than OpenAI's GTP-4--the stunningly capable language algorithm behind ChatGPT--until risks including job displacement and misinformation can be better understood. Even if OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, and other tech heavyweights were to stop what they're doing--and they're not going to stop what they're doing--the AI models that have already been developed are likely to have profound impacts, especially in software development. It might not look like a regular business deal, but Alphabet's agreement to supply AI to Replit, a web-based coding tool with over 20 million users, is something of a seismic shift. Replit will use Google's AI models, along with others, in Ghostwriter, a tool that recommends code and answers code-related questions in a manner similar to ChatGPT. Amjad Masad, Replit's CEO, tells me that Google has "super cool technology" and that his company can get it into the hands of developers.