Answers.Body: <p>I think that the answer to your question is yes. In the article <a href="https://www.futurity.org/artificial-intelligence-bayou-coding-1740702/" rel="noreferrer">New A.I. application can write its own code</a>, the authors state</p>
  <blockquote>
  <p>Computer scientists have created a deep-learning, software-coding application that can help human programmers navigate the growing multitude of often-undocumented application programming interfaces, or APIs.</p>
  <p>Designing applications that can program computers is a long-sought grail of the branch of computer science called artificial intelligence (AI). The new application, called Bayou, came out of an initiative aimed at extracting knowledge from online source code repositories like GitHub. Users can try it out at askbayou.com.</p>
  </blockquote>
  <p>The paper <a href="https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.05698.pdf" rel="noreferrer">Neural Sketch Learning for Conditional Program Generation</a> may also be useful.</p>
  
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Answers.UserDisplayName: Brian O'Donnell
Answers.Body: <p>There's Neural Program Synthesis, which can be used to generate a piece of code. Please, have a look at the article <a href="https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/neural-program-synthesis/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Neural Program Synthesis</a> by Microsoft for an overview of the field.</p>
  
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Answers.Text: You could also take a look at [DeepCoder: Learning to Write Programs](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.01989.pdf).
Answers.UserDisplayName: nbro
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Answers.UserDisplayName: a3.14_Infinity
Answers.Body: <p>The other answers cover modern work on this, but it's not even a new topic!</p>
  <p><a href="http://www.genetic-programming.org/gpbook1toc.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">Koza's work</a> in Genetic Programming (1992) led to whole sub-fields doing this. The techniques are widely used, robust, and well understood. They're just very computationally expensive. Enough so that most of the time you're better off just hiring a programmer to do it.</p>
  
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Body: <p>Does an AI exist that can automatically write software based on a formal specification of the software?</p>
  
Tags: <machine-learning><reference-request><genetic-programming><inductive-programming>
Title: Does an AI exist that can write software based on a formal specification?
UserDisplayName: user79161
ThreadText: # Does an AI exist that can write software based on a formal specification?
  
  (Asked by: username_0 on 2018-07-31)
  
  Does an AI exist that can automatically write software based on a formal specification of the software?
  
  **Tags:** machine-learning, reference-request, genetic-programming, inductive-programming
  
  ---
  
  ## 3 answers
  
  ### Answer by username_1 on 2018-08-01. Score: 6
  
  I think that the answer to your question is yes. In the article [New A.I. application can write its own code](https://www.futurity.org/artificial-intelligence-bayou-coding-1740702/), the authors state
  
  > Computer scientists have created a deep-learning, software-coding application that can help human programmers navigate the growing multitude of often-undocumented application programming interfaces, or APIs.
  >
  > Designing applications that can program computers is a long-sought grail of the branch of computer science called artificial intelligence (AI). The new application, called Bayou, came out of an initiative aimed at extracting knowledge from online source code repositories like GitHub. Users can try it out at askbayou.com.
  
  The paper [Neural Sketch Learning for Conditional Program Generation](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1703.05698.pdf) may also be useful.
  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_2 on 2018-08-01. Score: 5
  
  There's Neural Program Synthesis, which can be used to generate a piece of code. Please, have a look at the article [Neural Program Synthesis](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/neural-program-synthesis/) by Microsoft for an overview of the field.
  
  > **Comments:**
  > **username_3**: You could also take a look at [DeepCoder: Learning to Write Programs](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1611.01989.pdf).  
  
  ---
  
  ### Answer by username_4 on 2018-08-01. Score: 5
  
  The other answers cover modern work on this, but it's not even a new topic!
  
  [Koza's work](http://www.genetic-programming.org/gpbook1toc.html) in Genetic Programming (1992) led to whole sub-fields doing this. The techniques are widely used, robust, and well understood. They're just very computationally expensive. Enough so that most of the time you're better off just hiring a programmer to do it.
  
  
  ---
  
  