In your view, what are the greatest potential risks of using AI coding assistants? What’s the best way to protect the organization against those possible liabilities?

AI coding assistants - As the name says - It should just assist you. 

Heavy reliance on coding assistants can lead to innovation fatigue. For asking the right question, you need to understand what should be the potential end result. And then making the most out of the response is again your responsibility.

I have seen devs paste the whole code and ask for issues in code. and that code contains all user name , password, API keys etc. Thats a huge security risk.

Over-reliance on AI is a significant risk. Developers might lose their problem-solving abilities and critical thinking skills if they depend too much on AI. It's essential to maintain discipline in coding, testing, and sending code to production, whether it's AI-generated or human-written. Ensuring that developers continue to engage in problem-solving and critical thinking is crucial.

Security vulnerabilities are a major concern. AI-generated code can have hidden security flaws that are not immediately visible. It's also crucial to ensure that the code quality is maintained and that the code does not infringe on intellectual property rights. To mitigate these risks, organizations should implement strict code reviews and testing protocols. This includes having multiple layers of review to catch any potential issues.

One of the greatest risks is blindly trusting the AI-generated code. For example, the AI might produce code that is biased or inadvertently leaks sensitive information like passwords. Developers must be cautious and thoroughly review AI-generated code to avoid these issues. Additionally, using tools like ChatGPT can inadvertently train the AI with proprietary information, leading to data leaks.