I agree - if you do not give the AI system information about the larger scope of the code you’re writing, it is trying to help you by makeing inferences with a lot of assumptions. It lacks context and without it, it will perform poorly.
In a VSCode project, I get the sense that CoPilot is intimately aware of all parts of the code. It knows all the variables, their scope, and my development style. It is aware of every function, class, and environment variable. With that perspective, it needs to make fewer assumptions than ChatGPT needs to make. Ergo - magical productivity.
… especially if I am not knowledgeable to just write it myself
Doesn’t this make CoPilot’s point? GPT is not perfect, but neither are we. In fact, we have not seen the 200 patterns that GPT has seen to create a GUID (for example). And to be clear - GitHub describes it as a “Paired Programmer”, a partner whose intent is to help, not replace.