Here’s a little example of the value of GPT-4 (the most advanced multimodal large language model, meaning a state-of-the-art set of neural networks) as a programming consultant. After a long back and forth between the AI and myself, I was trying to refactor the determination of what was the tile type of a map at a certain hex coordinate, but the safety measures (greatly appreciated in general) of Rust were alerting me that I was trying to borrow a variable from a scope that was about to disappear, which is illegal. Such borrowing issues make refactoring in Rust vastly more thorny than in any other language of which I’m aware, but it also prevents memory bugs. I couldn’t remember how to solve it (I’m quite rusty myself), so I just asked GPT-4. Here’s the exchange:

Programming along with GPT-4 is like being able to rely on a sometimes forgetful veteran who will always stop whatever it is doing to help you. Given that it’s very unlikely that programming will trigger OpenAI’s content moderation systems, I don’t see why you wouldn’t use GPT-4 constantly while programming (as long as you can afford the subscription).