POPL 2024
Sun 14 - Sat 20 January 2024 London, United Kingdom
Sun 14 Jan 2024 17:48 - 18:06 at Turing Lecture - Code Generation Chair(s): Stefan Zetzsche

The use of large language models for code generation is a rapidly growing trend in software development. However, without effective methods for ensuring the correctness of generated code, this trend could lead to any number of undesirable outcomes. In this paper, we lay out a vision for addressing this challenge: the Clover paradigm, short for Closed-Loop Verifiable Code Generation, which reduces correctness checking to the more accessible problem of consistency checking. At the core of Clover lies a checker that performs consistency checks among code, docstrings, and formal annotations. The checker is implemented using a novel integration of formal verification tools and large language models. We provide a theoretical analysis to support our thesis that Clover should be effective at consistency checking. We also empirically investigate its feasibility on a hand-designed dataset (CloverBench) featuring annotated Dafny programs at a textbook level of difficulty. Experimental results show that for this dataset, (i) LLMs are reasonably successful at automatically generating formal specifications; and (ii) our consistency checker achieves a promising acceptance rate (up to 87%) for correct instances while maintaining zero tolerance for incorrect ones (no false positives).

Sun 14 Jan

Displayed time zone: London change

17:30 - 18:15
Code GenerationDafny at Turing Lecture
Chair(s): Stefan Zetzsche Amazon Web Services
17:30
18m
Talk
Generation of Verified Assembly Code Using Dafny and Reinforcement Learning
Dafny
Christopher Brix RWTH Aachen University, Jean-Baptiste Tristan Amazon Web Services
17:48
18m
Talk
CLOVER: Closed-Loop Verifiable Code Generation
Dafny
Chuyue Sun Stanford University, Ying Sheng Stanford University, Oded Padon VMware Research, Clark Barrett Stanford University
18:06
9m
Day closing
Day closing
Dafny
Stefan Zetzsche Amazon Web Services, Joseph Tassarotti NYU