Hi Markus! thank you for this well-thought comment!

I agree with most of what you said. I agree Codex can't engage in discourse to disentangle the meaning behind a sentence like "my life must become easier." Neither can it resolve potential ambiguities or refine its understanding the way we do.

However, I think it's important to note that it was not intended to be able to do that. It's designed to help programmers like Stack Overflow does, although in a more interactive manner.

About your last paragraph, you stated the commonalities between a traditional compiler and Codex, but there's a big difference. A traditional compiler makes those transformations using perfectly defined formal rules. No uncertainty, no ambiguity. Perfect syntax.

In contrast, Codex takes a natural language prompt — radically different than a formal rule — and interprets it in a similar way we'd do it. It doesn't understand it, but it manages to patch the gaps in meaning and resolve the uncertainties to send a clear order to the computer in the form of well-generated code. That's something else!

What do you think?

Cheers :)