What advantages does GitHub Copilot provide?

AI assistants are rapidly gaining traction, personally I found GitHub Copilot to be a tool that becomes immediately indispensable.

Estimates quantifying the benefits vary, with GitHub's own providing a start-point https://github.blog/2022-09-07-research-quantifying-github-copilots-impact-on-developer-productivity-and-happiness/

Copilot advantages I've experienced include:

1. Having a good pair programmer for remote work, making sensible and alternative suggestions and taking care of boilerplate code generation
2. Accelerated unit testing that is more comprehensive, has greater coverage and is more robust with more varied synthetic test data
3. Great naming conventions - seems trivial but is really important https://martinfowler.com/bliki/TwoHardThings.html

These combine to give faster delivery with less effort and higher quality, there are not many disadvantages that I have noticed so far other than:

1. Model hallucinations - seemingly sensible suggestions that induce errors
2. Recency - latest code needs and design not always catered for

Showing the evolution and benefits graphically:

AI assistants leverage collective intelligence as input, for coding this makes a lot of sense with general AI assistants looking destined to become core to digital working - what are your experiences? Share your views in the comments.

https://aibusiness.com/nlp/microsoft-rolls-out-bing-chat-copilot-for-enterprises-at-a-cost