DailyBrief: The world's first AI software engineer is here; and what's behind the bloodbath on D-street?

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Market Watch

• Indian benchmark indices ended a volatile trading session in the red with the Sensex down 906.07 points at 72,761.89, and the Nifty down 338.00 points at 21,997.70.
• All sectoral indices barring Nifty IT ended the day in the red.

Meet Devin, the world's first AI software engineer that writes, debugs, and deploys code

Devin is an AI that can autonomously handle the complete software development lifecycle, including writing, debugging, and deploying code, which puts it beyond the capabilities of current Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI's ChatGPT.

Why this matters: Early users have reported being able to build full websites and simple games in just 5-10 minutes using Devin, showcasing its speed and efficiency in software development tasks. It can handle entire development projects end-to-end, right from writing the code and fixing the bugs associated with it to final execution.

• It goes a long way toward achieving what NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang said about the need to stop asking children to learn to code. With Devin, English is the main programming language that one would need to know.

The details: Devin uses its own command line, code editor, and browser to systematically execute software projects, and it can debug its own code by adding print statements to identify errors.

• On the SWE-bench coding benchmark, Devin has outperformed other AI models with a 13.86% issue resolution rate, significantly higher than competitors like Anthropic's Claude 2 and GPT-4.

• In one case, Devin learned from a blog post how to run code to produce images with concealed messages.

Who made Devin? Devin was made by Cognition, a recently formed AI startup backed by Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund and tech industry leaders including former Twitter executive Elad Gil and Doordash co-founder Tony Xu. As of now Devin remains non-public, with the company opening access only to a select few customers.

So Game = Changed? Well, the jury is still out on that one.

Clip du jour

This video of Ed Sheeran interacting with kids at a school in Mumbai.

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What’s behind the meltdown on D-street today?

For starters, it was odd because it defied the global trade setup as the S&P500 had hit a record high overnight. By the end of the day, the Sensex was down close to 1000 points, the smallcap index fell over 5% (worst single-day fall since December 2022), midcaps lost 4% while microcaps and SME stock indices fell 6% each.

• The BSE-listed companies' market capitalisation declined by Rs 12 lakh crore, fueling worries about the excessive valuations in the smallcap segment, driven largely by retail investors' irrational exuberance, noted Dr. V K Vijayakumar of Geojit Financial Services.

Why? Despite the S&P500 reaching a record high overnight and Foreign Institutional Investors (FIIs) investing $3 billion in Indian stocks this month, the market downturn seems more domestically driven.

• SEBI has been active in addressing market froth, with chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch emphasizing the risks of allowing market froth to build. Post-SEBI's advice, ICICI Prudential Mutual Fund has temporarily suspended fresh subscriptions via lumpsum mode to smallcap and midcap funds, signalling concerns over valuations in the broader market.
• Meanwhile, the Enforcement Directorate's (ED) investigation into the Mahadev Online Book illegal betting app scam revealed a connection to the stock market bubble, with shares linked to Dubai-based alleged hawala operator Hari Shankar Tibrewala frozen, affecting stocks like Sigachi Industries and Gensol Engineering in which he held positions.

ICYMI

• Despite making progress under the Make In India initiative, India continues to remain the world largest arms importer.
• Bitcoin’s rally is continuing, and it has now hit $73,000.
• According to the Enforcement Directorate, a German national is the mastermind behind the Mahadev gaming-betting app.
• The SBI has disclosed some details about the electoral bonds.
• The government has banned the import, sale and breeding of dangerous dog breeds including rottweilers, pit bulls, and mastiffs among others.
• India might drop Virat Kohli from the 2024 T20 World Cup squad.