AI isn’t Ultron, but is it useful ? - Software Developers and AI

Everyone seems to be losing their mind over ChatGPT and other generative AI technology at the moment. Some people in our industry believe it will replace software developers. I suspect it more likely will help developers with boilerplate stuff or to assist with specific features. I wanted to chat briefly about how we at Marimosa have used it recently in our development work.

During the development of a mapping project, we needed to create GeoJSON polygons of the Scottish Isles. Whilst we could have done this manually, asking ChatGPT to create the GeoJSON saved us so much time! Don’t get me wrong, sometimes when asking for bigger areas it took a shortcut and just drew a rectangle around mainland of England, but it was pretty accurate for most things.

We also used ChatGPT to write a script to convert some data from one structure to another and insert it into a MongoDB database. Yes, we could have done this ourselves quickly enough but I was very impressed at how accurately it handled this requirement.

I don’t believe we’re seeing the beginnings of the Ultron uprising, and think we should embrace ChatGPT and AI as tools to help us do our jobs better. Unless it starts to speak like James Spader. Then it’s time to worry.

Tom Crawley

Director