TECHNOLOGY
Meta Launches Code Llama AI Tool For Coding
FB.com
Meta on Thursday released a new artificial intelligence-powered code-writing tool called Code Llama, based on its Llama 2 large language model.
Code Llama can use text prompts to generate new code or debug code written by humans, according to Meta.
“It has the potential to make workflows faster and more efficient for developers and lower the barrier to entry for people who are learning to code,” the company said in a statement.
Code Llama was created by training Llama 2 on code-specific datasets. In addition to enhanced coding capabilities, Code Llama can also generate natural language about code, from both code and natural language prompts.
The new system can support “many of the most popular programming languages used today, including Python, C++, Java, PHP, Typescript (Javascript), C#, Bash and more.”
Code Llama – Python is a language specialized variation trained on Python, “the most benchmarked language for code generation,” according to Meta.
Another variation, Code Llama – Instruct, is “an instruction fine-tuned and aligned variation of Code Llama,” Meta said.
“Instruction tuning continues the training process, but with a different objective. The model is fed a natural language instruction input and the expected output. This makes it better at understanding what people expect out of their prompts,” Meta said.
“We recommend using Code Llama – Instruct variants whenever using Code Llama for code generation since Code Llama – Instruct has been fine-tuned to generate helpful and safe answers in natural language,” Meta said.
Code Llama is being released in three sizes, and the smallest can fit on a single GPU, Meta said.
TMX contributed to this article.
