Tag: generative AI

  • 8 Ways ChatGPT Can Help Developers

    8 Ways ChatGPT Can Help Developers

    ‘Adapt or perish’ is the mantra in the tech world, and it holds particularly true if you’re a developer.

    Because of how dynamically technology evolves, developers face greater pressure than most to be ahead of the curve in adapting and becoming proficient in the best tools becoming available as a result. ChatGPT is the latest such tool.

    While there has been talk of ChatGPT being a “job killer” and horror stories are making the rounds about a dystopian future in which it renders half of humanity meaningless, the reality is much more nuanced. The market will evolve as it has with the advent of any technological advance, and those who can leverage such leaps to their advantage will continue to be effective.

    For developers, ChatGPT represents a chance to introduce efficiency in their tasks, scale up productivity and minimize errors and deficiencies. Used wisely and appropriately, it can help developers become better at their jobs by honing their abilities and enabling them to work more creatively within their existing functions.

    Here are just some of the few areas where ChatGPT can bring tremendous value to developers:

    Testing

    Writing code is a complex process. Debugging it is harder. And in between those two is the process of actually testing the code. ChatGPT allows developers to enable real-time or prompt-driven code testing at different instances to ensure the coding process becomes more efficient.

    ChatGPT provides a wide array of suggestions and assertions based on the functions and variables used in that particular code to allow for wholly tailored testing of the code for that particular environment. Doing so can be particularly helpful in the subsequent debugging and documentation phases.

    Debugging

    Ask any developer what the worst part of their job is, and debugging is likely to be relatively high on their list. As an old saying goes, “An average developer spends hours writing code and days debugging it.”

    However, with ChatGPT, that may soon become a thing of the past; it can be leveraged to debug thousands of lines of code for error identification and then debug again based on any error message received.

    Regardless of whether you’re a seasoned veteran or just starting out, in this particular case, ChatGPT can be invaluable when scanning code and suggesting possible fixes. Used effectively, this can help developers perform their functions more efficiently by eliminating the laborious hours spent identifying the problem to fix.

    Furthermore, this should prove particularly helpful when writing test cases and documenting the debugging process to identify what caused the bug in the first place.

    Documentation

    As mentioned above, ChatGPT can be leveraged to assist in or, in some limited cases, perform the entire process of documentation.

    It can analyze complex code, contextualize and understand its logic and develop an appropriate explanation of the code’s functionality. More importantly, the specific language used in such documentation can be adjusted to ensure it is tailored to the skill and comprehension level of the person reading it.

    Imagine not having to explain and re-explain how the code works based on who reads the documentation. As a result, developers can spend more time coding rather than documenting what their code does.

    Code Generation

    The most exciting, if not the most effective, way ChatGPT promises to revolutionize what it means to be a developer is code generation. With its code generation functionality, ChatGPT effectively functions as a personal coding assistant that understands the users’ coding preferences and natural language and turns that into executable code.

    Doing so promises to bring unparalleled efficiency to all code generation, as simple command prompts can be used to produce code. In other words, code generation that would have taken minutes can now be done within seconds.

    Moreover, this allays the fears of complete code generation by ChatGPT, as programmers can assume an oversight role over its generated code. This, coupled with some of the other benefits discussed, has a lot of time-saving potential and it can maximize productivity.

    Data Preprocessing

    Machine learning is yet another exciting aspect that promises to drive the future of coding and development in general. ChatGPT can be used across the board to clean, transfer and appropriate particular datasets to be used for testing and training.

    With the ability to deal with issues such as missing values and miscoded variables, ChatGPT can enhance the overall value that can be driven from any particular dataset while bringing more efficiency to the table.

    3D Designs

    This is where the expansive aspect of ChatGPT, as mentioned earlier, comes into play. ChatGPT is more than just a programming developer’s friend. ChatGPT is fully capable of being integrated into the Unity Editor. This is particularly significant as this allows for extensive 3D modeling and in-game designs.

    Digital prompts can be converted into usable 3D images and models, allowing faster and more elaborate renders. This promises better productivity, with the scale of in-game designs set for unprecedented growth in terms of both details and content.

    Threat Detection

    ChatGPT is already pushing the limits and boundaries in terms of generating and documenting code. Additionally, it addresses another vital issue related to coding and programming as a whole: Identifying potential vulnerabilities.

    Using security tools such as a firewall or password manager is not enough protection. ChatGPT can be leveraged to generate code and peruse and review existing code to weed out any potential vulnerabilities. Not only can it point out potential vulnerabilities, but it also helps carry out parallel quality assurance to enhance the overall security and quality of that code.

    Pair that with the conventional and reliable privacy and security elements, and you’ve generated near-impenetrable code for secure deployment.

    Customized Extensions

    Perhaps the most hyped-up benefit of ChatGPT is the proliferation of extensions available since its release. While the use of automation to oversee the completion of tedious and monotonous tasks is nothing new, ChatGPT allows for an unprecedented degree of customizable extensions. Developers can generate extensions based on their own usage patterns and preferences.

    Final Thoughts

    As is the case with any new technological wonder, ChatGPT is a resourceful tool, but its full potential can only be leveraged by those that understand it and know exactly where and how ChatGPT may prove most productive. However, the very fact that we do not yet understand the full extent of its capabilities should be cause for caution.

    ChatGPT has already faced mounting criticism related to how it handles users’ data privacy, particularly that of minors.

    It is critical for organizations to devote appropriate resources to fully assess exactly how ChatGPT may bring the most value to them without negatively impacting security and data privacy.

  • ClickUp Adds Project Management Templates to Invoke ChatGPT

    ClickUp Adds Project Management Templates to Invoke ChatGPT

    ClickUp is adding templates and collaboration tools to make it easier to access generative artificial intelligence platforms such as ChatGPT from within its project management application.

    Haris Butt, head of product design for ClickUp, said ClickUp AI now includes pre-built department-specific prompts that any product managers, developers or designers can easily access rather than having to develop prompt engineering skills to engage a generative AI platform more effectively.

    The templates, for example, make it simpler to produce summaries of project timelines in addition to the ability to automatically generate a whiteboard that lists tasks that need to be finished to complete a project.

    In the longer term, ClickUp is also moving toward developing its own large language model (LLM) using its own data to provide a generative AI experience specifically optimized for project management, added Butt.

    ClickUp is embedding AI into project management applications as part of an effort to eliminate drudgery, added Butt. One of the primary issues that makes project management challenging is that navigating workflows can be challenging, especially for stakeholders that might not be as well versed in, for example, how a Gantt chart flows.

    It’s still early days as far as generative AI is concerned, but it’s already apparent that a wide range of templates are being developed to make it simpler to invoke these platforms. The need for project managers to become well-versed in all the nuances of prompt engineering techniques to optimize generative AI queries is likely to be limited.

    In fact, the general expectation is that every application will eventually include templates for invoking generative AI capabilities. Less clear is the impact that should have on productivity. In the case of DevOps teams, however, many tedious project management tasks should become increasingly automated.

    Generative AI will, of course, soon be employed across the entire DevOps workflow. Many of the tasks that have historically conspired to make DevOps processes tedious will be automated. In fact, many application developers are already using AI to test and review code. DevOps teams that have historically advocated ruthless approaches to automation are likely to be at the forefront of AI adoption.

    There are, of course, concerns about the accuracy of generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT that have been trained using data that hasn’t always been verified. As a result, it’s possible that some of the results being surfaced by these platforms should be reviewed by humans before being acted on. However, LLMs trained on narrower ranges of validated data will soon become commonplace. As those AI advances are made, the accuracy of generative AI platforms that are optimized for specific use cases will increase.

    In the meantime, DevOps teams should be more concerned about being left behind than about how generative AI impacts their employment prospects. There is no doubt generative AI will transform DevOps workflows along with a wide range of processes. The issue now is determining where DevOps teams can add value—and where machines can’t—in an era where IT environments are becoming more complex with each passing day.

  • Atlassian Embeds Generative AI Across Cloud App Portfolio

    Atlassian Embeds Generative AI Across Cloud App Portfolio

    At its Team 23 conference today, Atlassian announced it is adding an artificial intelligence (AI) capability to the enterprise editions of its cloud portfolio to automate a wide range of routine tasks.

    Sherif Mansour, distinguished product manager for Atlassian, said Atlassian Intelligence uses natural language to drive a virtual agent that resolves routine help desk issues from within Slack or Microsoft Teams. Atlassian Intelligence can also identify incidents that have been previously resolved along with issues that are related to one another.

    In addition, IT teams can also leverage Atlassian Intelligence to create summaries for projects being tracked using the company’s Jira project management software, noted Mansour.

    The overall goal is to streamline incident management processes while also making it simpler for application stakeholders to collaboratively participate in software development, he added.

    Generative AI capabilities are likely to be infused into almost every imaginable application going forward, but Atlassian is clearly at the forefront of an effort to leverage AI to improve productivity. For example, instead of spending time handling routine issues that increase the amount of daily toil, IT teams should be able to spend more time resolving more complex issues, noted Mansour.

    The cumulative effect of AI should result in a significant decrease in the backlog of tasks that many IT teams would otherwise have to manually perform, he noted.

    It’s not clear just yet how much generative AI will impact the way software is developed and how IT is managed, but it’s already apparent that fundamental change is on the way. The Atlassian Intelligence approach is intended to augment the capabilities of IT teams so they can do more with the same number of or fewer personnel.

    The challenge IT teams will face is identifying tasks they couldn’t previously accomplish simply because there wasn’t enough time available.

    Fundamentally, generative AI changes the way humans interact with machines. Instead of requiring a developer to create a level of abstraction to communicate with a machine, it’s now possible for machines to understand the language humans use to communicate with each other. That makes it possible for anyone to make use of large language models used to create generative AI platforms to, for example, automate a routine task or, one day soon, create code.

    At this point, like it or not, the generative AI genie is out of the proverbial bottle. Just about every job function imaginable will be impacted to varying degrees. In the case of IT organizations, the ultimate impact should involve less drudgery as many of the tasks that make managing IT tedious are eliminated.

    Hopefully, as IT continues to evolve, there will still be plenty of demand for human expertise. For better or worse, the nature of the expertise required, however, will undoubtedly be at a much higher level than it has been for the past four decades or more.

  • Endor Labs Taps ChatGPT to Identify Secure Open Source Software

    Endor Labs Taps ChatGPT to Identify Secure Open Source Software

    Endor Labs has launched DroidGPT, an extension of its software for assessing risks in open source code. DroidGPT integrates the ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform to make it simpler to discover the most secure version of an open source package.

    That capability makes it possible for developers to launch a natural language query from within the Endor Labs platform that asks ChatGPT to identify, for example, the most secure logging modules of Java applications.

    Endor Labs CEO Varun Badhwar said the goal is to make it simpler to apply guardrails to application development processes that today rely heavily on reusing open source packages. Developers often wind up using an older version of those packages that are not as secure because a known vulnerability has not been remediated.

    Endor Labs’ Dependency Lifecycle Management platform applies graph analysis to identify the depth of dependencies that exist within an application. That capability makes it simpler to identify where vulnerable components have actually been employed within an application. DroidGPT extends that capability to identify the most secure versions of those components that developers should be using, said Badhwar.

    Having a full understanding of their dependency graph also lets customers generate and analyze accurate software bills of materials (SBOMs) as applications are dynamically updated, noted Badhwar.

    The level of dependency on open source software packages to create applications has risen sharply over the years. An analysis of nearly 2,000 software packages published by Endor Labs found 95% of all application vulnerabilities can be traced back to a transitive dependency created when a developer used an open source component. Functional dependencies are created whenever developers download a third-party component, so it is crucial to assess the risk levels created by those dependencies.

    Fortunately, in the wake of a series of high-profile breaches, there has been increased focus on securing software supply chains. The ongoing challenge is most developers don’t have a lot of cybersecurity expertise, so as contributions are made to open source projects it’s relatively easy for mistakes to be made. The simple truth is many applications deployed in production environments are riddled with known vulnerabilities that have yet to be addressed. DroidGPT is designed to make it simpler to begin the process of remediating software vulnerabilities in applications as they are built and after they are deployed.

    There is no doubt that it will take years before organizations are able to implement a set of truly mature DevSecOps best practices to teach developers how to build more secure applications. That journey, however, needs to begin with tools that enable them to address fundamental issues that dependencies inevitably create. After all, the best way to combat application vulnerabilities is to make sure they don’t manifest themselves in code in the first place. Making it easier to update applications using older versions of open source modules is nothing less than critical at a time when cybercriminals are getting more adept at exploiting them.

  • New Relic Bets on AI to Advance Observability

    New Relic Bets on AI to Advance Observability

    New Relic is preparing to extend the capabilities of its observability platform by making use of both additional machine learning algorithms and the ChatGPT generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform.

    Peter Pezaris, senior vice president for strategy and experience at New Relic, said during an interview on an episode of TechStrong TV that a prototype of an AI model created using machine learning algorithms will automatically notify developers when code in a production environment is not performing well—right within their integrated development environment (IDE). The notification will then take developers to the precise line of code identified as the root cause of the issue, he said.

    DevOps teams will need to add two lines of code to applications running in production environments to take advantage of this capability. New Relic also plans to use a similar approach to integrate with generative AI platforms such as ChatGPT to create suggestions for fixing code, he added. ChatGPT now makes it possible to create entire programs in ways that output HTML and JavaScript code, so DevOps teams should expect to be able to use the platform to create natural language queries that invoke the proprietary query language New Relic makes available for its observability platform, he noted. Conversely, ChatGPT will make it possible to explain how a piece of code functions in plain language, Pezaris added.

    Previously, New Relic employed a similar approach to integrate its observability platform with machine learning operations (MLOps) platforms used to build and deploy AI models. This was part of a larger effort to integrate MLOps and DevOps workflows, added Pezaris.

    These AI extensions to the New Relic platform are part of a larger effort to extend the reach of the New Relic One observability platform further left toward developers. Most recently, New Relic added a free CodeStream module to its observability platform to give developers access to metrics and telemetry data that will enable them to write higher-quality code faster.

    That approach eliminates the need to wait for IT operations teams to surface issues that usually don’t manifest until long after the code in question was originally developed. The overall goal is to provide development teams with frictionless access to observability data at every stage of the software development life cycle to reduce mean-time-to-detection (MTTD) and mean-time-to-resolution (MTTR) of issues.

    Organizations should also be able to reduce technical debt faster by making it easier to identify issues that, for example, adversely impact application performance.

    In general, most organizations are still in the early stages of achieving full-stack observability. A recent New Relic survey found only 27% of respondents have achieved full-stack observability, and only 5% claimed they have a mature observability practice in place. A third (33%) of respondents also said they still primarily detect outages manually or based on complaints, the survey found.

    On the plus side, the survey also found nearly three-quarters of respondents said C-suite executives in their organization are advocates of observability, and more than three-quarters of respondents (78%) saw observability as a key enabler for achieving core business goals. However, more than half (52%) of respondents said they experienced high-business-impact outages once per week or more and 29% said they take more than an hour to resolve those outages.

    The hope is, of course, that by augmenting DevOps teams with AI capabilities, the number of those outages will be dramatically reduced in the months and years ahead.

  • Tabnine Extends Generative AI Alliance With Google

    Tabnine Extends Generative AI Alliance With Google

    Tabnine has extended its alliance with Google Cloud to advance the adoption of generative artificial intelligence (AI) to automate the writing and testing of code.

    The generative AI platform provider has already developed its own large language model that is hosted on Google Cloud. Tabnine is now also committing to leveraging the large language model that Google is developing to automate software development life cycle processes.

    Brandon Jung, vice president of ecosystems for Tabnine, said it’s apparent that application development and deployment teams will be making use of multiple large language models across SDLC workflows. Not all those large language models will be developed by one single platform provider, he noted.

    Rather than being dogmatic about large language models, Tabnine plans to make it possible to invoke multiple models via application programming interfaces (APIs) that are integrated with development environments, he added.

    The Tabnine platform supports multiple programming languages, including Python, Java and JavaScript and is designed to be integrated with integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Visual Studio Code and Jetbrains. The company also previously integrated its code completion tool with the GitLab continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform. The overall goal is to make it easier for developers to automatically write code based on custom models using approved source code hosted in a secure private repository.

    Generative AI creates a large language model that assesses the probability of what the next line of code will be based on what has preceded it. It’s not likely DevOps teams will be replaced as generative AI is extended across workflows, but the overall size of those teams might shrink as it becomes possible to do more with fewer people. At the same time, the barrier to DevOps adoption will also fall as AI platforms make it simpler for more organizations to embrace DevOps best practices.

    The challenge will be making sure the data collected to train AI models is of a high enough quality to ensure the desired outcome. Organizations will need to find a way to apply generative AI to data models that have been validated by DevOps teams.

    One way or another, it’s only a matter of time before generative AI capabilities are applied more broadly. Platforms such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT are only the tip of an iceberg that impacts almost every manual process, including software development and deployment. The issue will be determining how quickly those innovations will become practical enough to employ.

    In the meantime, it is already apparent generative AI platforms are having a significant impact on the rate at which code can be developed. Inevitably, that means the amount of code moving through DevOps pipelines at any one time should increase significantly. DevOps teams should expect generative AI technologies to be applied both before and after application code is built and deployed, noted Jung.

    In the meantime, the biggest issue is, arguably, keeping up with a rate of generative AI innovation that is occurring faster than many organizations can absorb.

  • Microsoft Power Platform Integrates ChatGPT: What This Means

    Microsoft Power Platform Integrates ChatGPT: What This Means

    Microsoft recently announced it integrated ChatGPT into its low-code Power Platform developer suite. This follows the news of ChatGPT-powered Bing search and Microsoft’s pledge to invest billions into its partner company, OpenAI.

    ChatGPT, the large language model (LLM), has reached viral status due to its ability to generate impressively complex textual outputs given simple prompts. And now, enterprises are hoping to cash in on its power. Microsoft’s inclusion of ChatGPT in its Power Virtual Agents and AI Builder tools will likely signal more native inclusion of AI models within other low-code development environments throughout the industry.

    However, not all is peachy in the world of generative AI. Users have compiled a laundry list of ChatGPT failures, ranging from simple arithmetic errors and inaccurate information to social biases and even one attempt to dissolve a journalist’s marriage. AI seems sure of itself, but the “hallucinations” it produces can be mind-bogglingly off-base. If such inaccuracies persist within production use cases, it could lead to false suggestions that confuse users and even harm a company’s reputation.

    Below, I’ll consider the implications of this new paradigm of AI-driven development, exploring the benefits and potential risks of incorporating LLMs into low-code development frameworks. We’ll also highlight how this may upset the competition and consider things leaders should keep in mind as they seek to leverage this new technology.

    Benefits of Incorporating ChatGPT

    Low-code development platforms (LCDPs) excel at abstracting complex functionalities into usable components. They typically offer drag-and-drop capabilities and reusable templates to enable citizen developers and professional programmers alike. And there are many potential benefits of incorporating ChatGPT into such a low-code environment. For example, as a feature within Power Virtual Agents, ChatGPT can be used to create chatbots that connect to public company resources and internal company data. This could help users seamlessly develop a contextually-aware AI trained on a company’s documents.

    Utilizing AI within low-code can spur development with deep inferences and guidance. Such AI assistance can drastically accelerate development efforts through enhanced auto-completion and intelligent insights, quickly generating boilerplate code and making suggestions more customized to the task at hand than your typical static templates.

    GPT-based chatbots leveraging AI trained on a company’s documents could be incredibly more valuable than an off-the-shelf model without context. In the realm of customer support, an in-house trained AI could be beneficial in summarizing company information and automating manual support activities. Providing a low-code means to generate such chatbots also brings advanced AI to a broader range of users. All in all, this could advance the pace of development, especially for mobile interfaces, automated workflows and contextually-aware chatbots.

    Implications For the Low-Code Space

    In the wake of ChatGPT, the market has been scrambling to respond. Tech giants have debuted their own generative AI to mixed reviews. And some, myself included, are left pondering how low-code and AI will coexist in this new era. Will natural language-driven code generation replace the need for programming entirely, whether it’s traditional or ‘codeless’?

    This remains uncertain. But what appears most plausible is that these recent developments will raise the bar throughout the software industry and augment how LCDPs are built and used. AI has the power to enhance LCDPs in a few ways, including augmenting the developer experience, training bespoke ML models and building more intelligent end-user experiences.

    Yet, with Microsoft funneling billions into AI research and development, it could be challenging for mid-size low-code platforms to keep pace without their own AI-driven workflows. Thus, the LCDPs that do not integrate robust AI of their own may lose out on new subscribers. Plus, engineers hoping to create AI models that run on internal datasets may prefer working with a larger cloud technology suite in which their data is natively stored.

    Downsides of AI-Infused Programming

    ChatGPT and other generative models are absolutely impressive, but the results can’t be 100% trusted. And at the time of writing, ChatGPT usage within PowerApps is still experimental, which is indicative of ChatGPT and generative AI in general—still in the experimentation phase.

    This doesn’t bode all that well for programmers relying on its outputs, given the potential for inaccuracies. Because although the results of ChatGPT sound authoritative, they are generated from knowledge scoured from the public web, which often contains bugs, errors and inefficiencies.

    The outputs of ChatGPT may even suggest entirely nonexistent features! This is, unfortunately, a current issue with geocoding API provider OpenCage. ChatGPT routinely recommends users integrate OpenCage’s “phone lookup service” for certain prompts. But … OpenCage doesn’t even offer this feature. The team has received so many complaints from angry developers that they even had to issue a statement explaining what happened.

    With AI code generation, the focus shifts from hardcoding toward creating and organizing prompts and debugging errors. And although it’s giving programmers newfound agility, it doesn’t solve all software development problems—namely, the DevOps side of the equation. There will still be friction in deploying code and piecing together an optimal architecture. Also, due to rising software supply chain vulnerabilities, code automation that loops in third-party dependencies must require careful security forethought. There’s also the chance of breaking changes and ongoing maintenance hurdles with any software.

    Another important element is that low-code requires governance to be secured correctly. No-code business users may not have the security oversight to understand the implications of spinning up new services. And when you add AI into the mix, the technical implications escalate. AI can result in ethical violations, and bots have been found to communicate anger and irrational ideas when poked and prodded.

    Are We All Just Hallucinating?

    ‘Hallucinating’ is when an AI model confidently spouts nonsense or inaccurate information. And although this is the case with some models currently, they are actively accepting feedback and being retrained. Over time, their outputs will improve. But for now, engineers should be aware that they are still under experimentation. As such, enterprises should use caution and test new AI innovations on internal processes first. And AI adoption must be governed carefully to avoid misconfigurations and abuse.

    AI is here, and the future is now. But although it’s dismantling some coding barriers, developers still have their work cut out for them. This reality is a win for low-code solutions offering standard software delivery pipelines and centralized collaboration features. If LCDPs can maintain pace with AI and embed it into their workflows, both sides should fare pretty well in this new era.

    Surprise — this entire article was written by ChatGPT. Just kidding! None of it was. I’m just tired of seeing this “gotcha” moment at the end of news segments…

    This post was written by a human.

  • Before ChatGPT, AIOps Powered Enterprises for Years

    Before ChatGPT, AIOps Powered Enterprises for Years

    Led by OpenAI and its ChatGPT software, a new era of consumer use cases for artificial intelligence is here. These exciting new tools have made AI more accessible to more users than ever before. No longer is this technology the exclusive domain of wealthy corporations.

    However, while the world is now focused on the potential use cases for AI in consumer applications, it’s important to remember that this technology has been part of the business world for years. Behind the scenes, AI has quietly been powering solutions that companies of all sizes have harnessed to improve business outcomes. These technologies have specifically been used by IT teams in the form of artificial intelligence for IT operations (AIOps) to help modernize their companies and operate more efficiently.

    By leveraging AIOps-powered solutions in use cases like observability, overworked and understaffed technology teams are improving their ability to manage complicated, hybrid and multi-cloud IT environments, automate processes and optimize their businesses. As companies prepare for a potential economic downturn and a reduction in resources, these solutions and AIOps are more important than ever.

    Here are four ways that AIOps is helping businesses overcome today’s IT challenges.

    Providing Unified Visibility Into Complicated Networks

    Companies have accelerated their digital transformation efforts in recent years. This has included migrating workflows to public and private clouds, implementing new productivity tools and adopting next-generation technologies. The average business now relies on geographically dispersed workforces and IT environments that use 2.6 clouds and leverage more than 200 apps!

    The result is that organizations lack visibility into these environments. A recent SolarWinds survey found that 54% of technology professional respondents stated they only have visibility into about half or less of their apps and infrastructure. This lack of visibility can lead to problems that negatively impact the return on investment for projects.

    AIOps helps overcome this challenge by providing comprehensive visibility into an organization’s systems, regardless of whether those environments are hosted in on-premises, hybrid or multi-cloud environments. AIOps automatically collects and integrates insights and information across geographies, apps and infrastructures into one dashboard. This provides technology teams with single-pane-of-glass visibility into the state of IT environments.

    Automating Processes & Remediating Issues

    While the visibility provided by AIOps and observability is integral to managing today’s complex IT environments, the technology goes a step further.

    With AIOps, teams can automate processes including the identification and remediation of issues. Given the stakes, this is critical. Companies must ensure their environments are always available and that their performance meets and exceeds customer demands. Even short service outages can lead to frustrated users and a damaged customer experience.

    This is challenging, as an IT anomaly often results in many alerts and a flood of log messages, making the problem difficult for a human to understand and address. AIOps quickly ingests massive amounts of information, provides rapid root cause analysis, data/event correlation and incident management which allows for fast and automated remediation of issues as they arise.

    Additionally, since this technology is always observing and gathering information on potential incidents, it can predict and prevent future issues proactively. By implementing AIOps, companies are taking a step toward autonomous operations or environments that can manage themselves without human involvement.

    Protecting Revenue

    In the face of an uncertain economy, every organization is taking steps to protect its revenue. With AIOps, enterprise technology companies have a powerful tool in this fight.

    By implementing AIOps and observability, companies can quickly resolve and prevent IT issues before they arise. This ensures that IT environments are operating at maximum efficiency.

    With AIOps, organizations can reduce downtime and prevent outages. This ensures that business-critical applications and infrastructure are available and functioning. These capabilities are more important as even short service outages have reportedly been capable of causing millions of dollars in damages.

    Freeing Up Employee Time for Innovation and Efficiency

    Over the last few years, companies have experienced severe staffing challenges, with many organizations finding it difficult to fill critical technology roles. This has led to smaller teams with more responsibilities and less free time. The result has been overworked technology professionals who spend far too much time on manual and menial tasks that do little to support the business’s bottom line.

    By implementing AIOps, organizations can streamline workflows by automating repetitive and routine tasks. Doing so can cut down on the amount of overwhelming metrics technology professionals are required to analyze and, instead, empower those individuals and teams to again focus on innovating and completing projects that support key business objectives.

  • Tabnine Extends Generative AI Platform Reach to Testing

    Tabnine Extends Generative AI Platform Reach to Testing

    Tabnine today announced it extended its generative artificial intelligence (AI) platform that enables developers to write code faster to now include the ability to automatically generate tests for that code.

    Available in beta, this capability promises to make it easier for developers to test code at the time it is being developed. That approach should make it simpler for developers to address issues without losing any context.

    Brandon Jung, vice president of ecosystems and business development at Tabnine, said this latest addition to the Tabnine platform is part of a larger effort to extend the reach of the Tabnine generative AI platform across the entire software development life cycle. The testing capability is expected to be generally available in the third quarter, and Tabnine expects to also employ generative AI to automate a much wider range of tasks across the software development life cycle within the next 12 months.

    The Tabnine platform supports multiple programming languages including Python, Java and JavaScript and is designed to be integrated with integrated development environments (IDEs) such as Visual Studio Code and Jetbrains. The company has also previously integrated its code completion tool with the GitLab continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD) platform. The overall goal is to make it easier for developers to automatically write code based on custom models using approved source code hosted in a secure private repository, said Jung.

    Generative AI creates a large language model that assesses the probability of what the next line of code will be based on what has preceded it. Tabnine is now extending the model it created to also generate tests for the code its platform helped a developer write. It’s not clear what impact this ability to automate test creation will have on the need for dedicated testing teams, but it is about to become considerably easier to shift more responsibility for testing further left toward developers.

    It’s not likely DevOps teams will be replaced as generative AI is extended across workflows, but the overall size of those teams might shrink, noted Jung. DevOps teams will soon be able to do far more with fewer people, he noted. At the same time, the barrier to DevOps adoption will also fall as AI platforms make it simpler for more organizations to embrace DevOps best practices, added Jung.

    The challenge will be making sure the data collected to train AI models is of a high enough quality to ensure the desired outcome, noted Jung.

    One way or another, it’s now only a matter of time before generative AI capabilities are applied more broadly. Platforms such as ChatGPT developed by OpenAI are only the tip of the iceberg that impacts almost every manual process, including software development and deployment. The issue will be determining at what rate those innovations will become practical to employ. In the meantime, it is already apparent generative AI platforms are having a significant impact on the rate at which code can be developed. Inevitably, that means the amount of code moving through DevOps pipelines at any one time is about to increase significantly.