BUS375 TMA (Tutor-Marked Assignment) SUSS: July 2024 – Artificial Intelligence for Social Good, Singapore

Instructions

Students need to apply essential knowledge and skills learnt in this course to address the questions, and demonstrate ability to be creative to solve problems.

Students must demonstrate written proficiency by producing a type-written report in Microsoft Word 2013 or later (*.docx) format. Any key illustrations and diagrams should be shown in the main report with proper in-text citations.

Please note that:

• The details and names used in the questions are fictional. Any resemblance to real-life situation is purely coincidental.
• Students should not include the questions in the report.
• An ability to (i) conduct proper research, provide the appropriate referencing of sources (students must provide proper in-text citations and an end-text reference list), and (ii) demonstrate critical thinking and creativity are all essential skills that our students must develop. Hence, marks will also be awarded for good research effort and proper referencing.
• Fewer marks will be awarded to students who merely extract information from their reference sources without demonstration of critical analysis and creativity.
• Answers that are simply reproduced from the course materials will not be given any marks.

Question 1

On March 12, 2024, a US-based applied AI lab, called Cognition, unveiled Devin, the world’s first software engineer. With its advanced capabilities, Devin sets a new standard in the SWEbench coding benchmark (a benchmark for evaluating large language models on real world software issues collected from GitHub). Devin has passed practical engineering interview held by leading AI companies. Cognition also claimed that it has also completed real jobs posted on Upwork, an US-based freelancing platform.

Devin’s capabilities extend far beyond traditional AI tools. It can plan and execute complex engineering tasks autonomously, collaborate with users in real-time, learn how to use unfamiliar technologies, build and deploy apps end-to-end, find and fix bugs in codebases autonomously, train and fine-tune its own AI models, and address bugs and feature requests in open-source repositories, streamlining the development process.

In rigorous testing on the SWE-bench coding benchmark, Devin demonstrated unparalleled performance, resolving real-world software issues with remarkable accuracy. With an end-toend issue resolution rate of 13.86%, Devin surpasses previous state-of-the-art models by a significant margin, showcasing its unmatched capabilities in the field (Cognition Labs, 2023).

Reference: Cognition Labs. (2023). Cognition Labs launch Devin, the world’s first AI software engineer. Blockchain Council. https://www.blockchain council.org/news/cognition-labslaunch-devin-the-worlds-first-ai-software-engineer/

(a) Indicate three (3) underlying AI methods supporting Devin.

(b) Determine, compared to human capabilities, four (4) areas where Devin cannot exceed human engineers in the current stage.

(c) Appraise how Devin can influence two (2) of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) positively and two (2) of the SDGs negatively. Please write your answer in an essay format.