AI-Assisted Python for Nonprogrammers

Chapter 14. AI-Assisted Coding

The next time you get together with friends, ask everyone to stand in a circle, holding hands. Then ask two people to each put one hand on a terminal of a battery. Everyone in the circle will get an electric shock. Fun for everyone, right?

Warning

I hate that I have to say such a thing, when it should be obvious, but…​please don’t do this.

Where did I get such a strange (and extremely dangerous) idea? From none other than Benjamin Franklin, an American founding father and one of the most famous scientists of the 18th century. In Franklin’s day, electricity was at the cutting edge of science. People didn’t understand what it was, and certainly didn’t have any practical applications for it. But they did store electricity in a primitive battery known as a Leyden jar, and were delighted to find that the electric shock passed through people and certain materials.

It’s hard for us, in the modern era, to think of electricity as new, exciting, and impractical. But Franklin lived decades before the invention of the telegraph, and about a century before the invention of the electric light bulb. He and his friends couldn’t imagine that electricity would eventually power cities, vehicles, computers, and communication.

Why mention this? Because after decades of research, AI is finally starting to demonstrate practical use cases and benefits. We’re just starting to emerge from the Leyden jar era of AI, and beginning to see how and where to use it. However, we’re ...