Like almost any question about AI, “How does AI impact software architecture?” has two sides to it: how AI changes the practice of software architecture and how AI changes the things we architect. These questions are coupled; one can’t really be discussed without the other. But to jump to the conclusion, we can say that AI hasn’t had a big effect on the practice of software architecture, and it may never. But we expect the software that architects design will be quite different. There are going to be new constraints, requirements, and capabilities that architects will need to take into account ..read more

The first AI image generation model I got to play around with was Midjourney v2 in summer 2022. A month earlier, OpenAI had launched DALL-E 2 in beta, and the results looked unbelievably magical. You could generate images in any art style simply by prompting an AI with the name of an artist. I didn’t go to art school, and I didn’t really know that much about art, so one of the first prompts I tried was “Super Mario drinking a glass of beer.” The resulting image wasn’t anything Nintendo’s IP lawyers would get out of bed for, but exactly two years later, the version generated by Midjourney v6 is ..read more

It’s clear that generative AI is already being used by a majority—a large majority—of programmers. That’s good. Even if the productivity gains are smaller than many think, 15% to 20% is significant. Making it easier to learn programming and begin a productive career is nothing to complain about either. We were all impressed when Simon Willison asked ChatGPT to help him learn Rust. Having that power at your fingertips is amazing. But there’s one misgiving that I share with a surprisingly large number of other software developers. Does the use of generative AI increase the gap between entry-leve ..read more

Can anything that is programmable have an embedded LLM? Apparently so. llama.ttf is a plain old font that looks like Open Sans—you can download it and install it. We don’t know whether this is a massive vulnerability or a way to embed AI in almost any text-based application. Probably both. It may just be a coincidence, but several new programming languages have come on the scene in the past month or two. Why? This probably isn’t backlash against automated programming. (An LLM obviously can’t be trained for a language without much public source code.) AI This is crazy. llama.ttf is a font that ..read more

As AI continues to advance at a rapid pace, developers are increasingly turning to AI-driven development (AIDD) to build more intelligent and adaptive applications. However, using natural language prompts to describe complex behaviors to AI can be a real challenge. While natural language is expressive, it lacks the structure and efficiency needed to clearly communicate intricate instructions and maintain complex state. One of the biggest issues with natural language prompts is the lack of clear encapsulation and delineation of related instructions. Unlike source code, which uses elements like ..read more

The latest release of O’Reilly Answers is the first example of generative royalties in the AI era, created in partnership with Miso. This new service is a trustworthy source of answers for the O’Reilly learning community and a new step forward in the company’s commitment to the experts and authors who drive knowledge across its learning platform. Generative AI may be a groundbreaking new technology, but it’s also unleashed a torrent of complications that undermine its trustworthiness, many of which are the basis of lawsuits. Will content creators and publishers on the open web ever be direct ..read more

Learn more from the Generative AI Success Stories Superstream on June 12th. At O’Reilly, we’re not just building training materials about AI. We’re also using it to build new kinds of learning experiences. One of the ways we are putting AI to work is our update to Answers. Answers is a generative AI-powered feature that aims to answer questions in the flow of learning. It’s in every book, on-demand course, and video and will eventually be available across our entire learning platform. To see it, click the “Answers” icon (the last item in the list at the right side of the screen).&n ..read more

To hear directly from the authors on this topic, sign up for the upcoming virtual event on June 20th, and learn more from the Generative AI Success Stories Superstream on June 12th. Part I of this series can be found here and part II can be found here. We previously shared our insights on the tactics we have honed while operating LLM applications. Tactics are granular: they are the specific actions employed to achieve specific objectives. We also shared our perspective on operations: the higher-level processes in place to support tactical work to achieve objecti ..read more

May was a month of announcements: between Google, Apple, Microsoft, and OpenAI, there was much ado about—well, very little, in fact. It’s always seemed to me that big announcements steal attention that might otherwise go to projects that are less flashy but more deserving. (Or maybe I’m just becoming jaded.) That’s not to say that nothing interesting happened. We’re seeing continued interest in small language models—small enough to run on cell phones (which have more processing power than the supercomputers of a few decades ago). We’ve wondered whether new programming languages make sense in t ..read more

Read Part I of this series here and stay tuned for Part III. To hear directly from the authors on this topic, sign up for the upcoming virtual event on June 20th, and learn more from the Generative AI Success Stories Superstream on June 12th. A possibly apocryphal quote attributed to many leaders reads: “Amateurs talk strategy and tactics. Professionals talk operations.” Where the tactical perspective sees a thicket of sui generis problems, the operational perspective sees a pattern of organizational dysfunction to repair. Where the strategic perspective sees an opportuni ..read more