DSL Pilot: GitHub Copilot

We are now flying hours to thoroughly test this Copilot to see if it can be a valuable addition to our arsenal of data science tools.
In this blog post, we’ll tell you all about our experience so far.

GitHub Copilot: What Is It?

GitHub Copilot is an advanced AI coding partner designed to help developers write code.
It uses OpenAI Codex, a recently developed AI system by OpenAI, to extract context from written code and comments.
It then suggests new lines or entire functions.
It promises to speed up development and make it more efficient, which of course makes us curious!

Our Pilot Approach

We are testing GitHub Copilot for a month with a number of colleagues.
During this time, we will use GitHub Copilot in several projects to assess its performance and functionality.
We want to see how well it adapts to our unique data science needs and whether it can improve our work.

Privacy and Security: Our Priority!

Privacy and security are paramount in everything we do.
Before we started this pilot, we took a careful look at how GitHub Copilot handles data.
We want to make sure that sensitive information remains secure.
Good news is that GitHub Copilot does not use our code.
You can read more about this in the GitHub Copilot for Business Privacy Statement which talks about the security aspects of GitHub Copilot.

Our Expectations

We have high hopes for GitHub Copilot, but we understand that every tool has its strengths and weaknesses.
We hope to discover where it shines and where it can be improved.
At the end of this pilot, we will thoroughly evaluate whether we think GitHub Copilot is an asset to your Data Science work.
We’ll keep you posted on our findings, lessons learned, and any surprises we encounter along the way.
So, stay tuned and follow us for updates!
Have questions or comments about our GitHub Copilot pilot or want to share your own experiences?
Feel free to contact us!