Seminar: AutoCodeRover: AI-Powered Coding Meets Trust

Talk abstract:  Large Language Models (LLMs) have shown surprising proficiency in generating code snippets, promising to automate large parts of software engineering via artificial intelligence (AI). We argue that successfully deploying AI software engineers requires a level of trust equal to or even greater than the trust established by human-driven software engineering practices. The recent trend toward LLM agents offers a path toward integrating the power of LLMs to create new code with the power of program analysis tools to increase trust in the code.
In this talk, we will share our experience with students in coming up with the design of AutoCodeRover, an early approach towards agentic Artificial Intelligence (AI) in coding, which is seeing increased attention in 2025. The main differentiation of AutoCodeRover with other proposals was its focus on using program analysis tools autonomously. This allows AutoCodeRover to infer developer intent or specification inference, thereby successfully conducting program improvement such as program repair or feature addition. AutoCodeRover was a spinoff from NUS which has been acquired by SonarSource in February 2025.

We will conclude the talk with a discussion on how agentic AI may be shifting the balance in programming --- programming with trust becoming more important than programming at scale.

Read more:

A) OPINION PIECE:
https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.13767

B) PAPER published:
https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3650212.3680384

C) ACQUISITION announcement:
https://www.sonarsource.com/company/press-releases/sonar-acquires-autocoderover-to-supercharge-developers-with-ai-agents/

Speaker Bio: Abhik Roychoudhury is Provost's Chair Professor of Computer Science at the National University of Singapore (NUS), where he leads a research team on Trustworthy and Secure Software (TSS). He is also a Senior Advisor at SonarSource, subsequent to the acquisition of his spinoff AutoCodeRover on AI-based coding, by Sonar.
Abhik received his PhD in Computer Science from the Stony Brook University in 2000, and has been a faculty member at NUS School of Computing since 2001. Abhik's research group at NUS is known for foundational contributions to software testing and analysis. Specifically the team has made contributions to automatic programming and automated program repair, as well as to fuzz testing for finding security vulnerabilities in software systems. These works have been honored with various awards including an International Conference on Software Engineering (ICSE) Most Influential Paper Award (Test-of-time award) for program repair, IEEE New Directions Award 2022 (jointly with Cristian Cadar) for contributions to symbolic execution (for test generation and program repair).
Abhik was the inaugural recipient of the NUS Outstanding Graduate Mentor Award 2024. Doctoral students graduated from his research team have taken up faculty positions in many academic institutions including Max Planck Institute, NUS, University College London, University of Melbourne, Peking University and Concordia University. He has served the software engineering research community in various capacities including as chair of the major conferences of the field, ICSE and FSE. Currently, he serves as chair of the FSE steering committee. He is the current Editor-in-Chief of the ACM Transactions on Software Engineering and Methodology (TOSEM), and is a member of the editorial board of Communications of the ACM. Abhik is a Fellow of the ACM.