Original link: Morgan Stanley Uses AI to Translate COBOL! / Rich Tehrani blog.
Lots of people claim that it is possible to give an AI a huge Cobol code base and then it can convert it to a modern language.
Most likely the AI will not produce working code. The experience with really large code bases and AI are not good.
But even if the code worked, then it would almost certainly just be obsolete design in modern language instead of obsolete design in obsolete language, where the real goal is modern design in modern language,
But Morgan Stanley are smart. They do not use AI to convert the code - they use AI to produce description in English from the old Cobol and PL/I code. And then they have developers that are good at modern design and modern language implement a good solution.
They have converted 9 millions lines of code and they estimate that they have saved 280000 hours (~28 M$) using AI.