Can AI help solve the COBOL code crisis?
OpenAI is developing AI tools to help modernize critical infrastructure currently running on legacy COBOL code. This initiative aims to address the massive technical debt and security risks associated with aging systems in banking and government sectors.
Why it matters
Modernizing COBOL systems is a multi-billion dollar challenge; successful AI intervention could prevent systemic failures in global financial and government infrastructure.
What do the IRS, banks, airlines, and government infrastructure around the world have in common? They’re all running on systems propped up by antique computer code that nobody dares touch, lest everything come crashing down.
OpenAI thinks it may have a solution. On October 19th, the company touted “substantial improvements” in its latest AI models’ ability to migrate aging software written in older programming languages into modern code, which it claims could help organizations with “maintaining and modernizing older systems.”
That’s a potentially massive deal. COBOL, one of the languages highlighted by OpenAI, remains stubbornly embedded in vast portions of the world’s critical infrastructure. And despite decades of efforts to banish it to history, the language has limped on, simply refusing to die.
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