Meet Devin, the AI software engineer

Cognition, a US-based AI startup, has recently unveiled Devin, which is being called "the world's first AI software engineer". According to the company, Devin has already shown notable success in autonomous software development, passing practical engineering interviews at leading AI companies to completing real jobs on platforms like Upwork.

As per Cognition, One of Devin's standout achievements is its performance on the SWE-Bench coding benchmark, where it outshines previous state-of-the-art models. In this evaluation, Devin demonstrated the ability to resolve GitHub issues from real-world open-source projects, achieving an unassisted success rate of 13.86%. This far surpasses the performance of its predecessors, signalling a significant advancement in AI-driven software development, says Scott Wu, CEO of Cognition AI.

According to a video posted on X by Cognition, Devin is equipped with its own shell, code editor, and web browser. As such, the AI model operates as an independent agent, capable of tackling engineering tasks on its own, unlike traditional development assistants that only offer coding suggestions and auto-completion features.

Cognition adds that, from writing and debugging code to deploying functional websites and videos, Devin streamlines the development process, significantly reducing the time and effort required for troubleshooting. In a demonstration led by Wu, Devin showcased its prowess by simultaneously performing tasks and autonomously addressing bugs during the coding process. 

Devin has already garnered the attention of tech and AI enthusiasts around the world, with many netizens expressing the ethical concerns of potentially replacing human programmers with AI. Cognition, notably, is labelling Devin as a "teammate" rather than a replacement for human engineers, according to several reports.