Jay Suh

Final nAIl in the coffin

06 May 2024

I. Introduction

The popularity, usage, and the functionality has skyrocketed especially as of right now, where the development of AI is at its peak. Where before it would take hours to finish a single assignment, now takes one or two minutes by asking the AI a couple of questions. Coding has never been easier than it is now, especially software engineering, sure AI can’t make the entire project for you, hours of research can now be saved just by asking the AI one or 2 questions. With the rise of AI self learning concepts have never been easier, and doing trivial homework can also be completed within a matter of minutes. In 314 especially during WODS where speed was important, chatGPT was a last resort when I couldn’t seem to get the code to work and time was nearing the end. Also falling behind wasn’t an issue because teaching myself the topics that I’ve missed was as simple as typing in the topic and any questions that I had regarding it, and the best part about it was that since it wasn’t a human there was no worry about asking simple, trivial, or bombarding them with questions.

II. Personal Experience with AI:

I have used AI in class this semester in the following areas:

  1. Experience WODs e.g. E18 I have not used AI for any of the experience WODS since most of the time the answers were posted on the youtube videos. So I would watch the WODS once and then try to solve it a second time without it.
  2. In-class Practice WODs Since The in class practice WODS weren’t ever seriously graded there was no fear of my grade dropping, that’s not to say I wasn’t trying to solve it seriously. I just wasn’t desperate to find the solution compared to if I was doing an actual WOD. Granted most of the time the practice WODS were easy enough that I could do it even without the use of chatGPT.
  3. In-class WODs For most of the WODS that were graded I would use chatGPT as a last resort. For example, if I were struggling with getting my code to work, and there were about 10 minutes left on the clock, I would ask chatGPT how I could fix my code, most of the time it would fix some minor errors here and there, but there are some instances where it would actually break my code.
  4. Essays I have never used chatGPT for writing any of my essays whether that be in this class, past courses, or any courses in the future. I would never use AI to write an essay, especially technical essays where it needs a human touch, AI can’t replicate my own personal writing style and it just sounds very robotic.
  5. Final project I have used chatGPT for teaching me how to create a rating system that I could implement into my project. Since I haven’t learned explicitly how to make a rating system with stars and such, I had to ask the internet, but most of the answers that I got weren’t very useful so I asked chatGPT on how I could create a rating system that could be implemented into other classes, and it ended up not working, so I had to make some tweaks of my own to get it to properly run the way I wanted it to.
  6. Learning a concept / tutorial Yes, I’ve had chatGPT teach me concepts, it is especially helpful in my algorithms class, where everything is conceptual and trying to understand everything in one night is close to impossible, so chatGPT really helps save time and explains all of the concepts in a way that’s easier to understand than any of the textbooks. In this class specifically, like in the previous experience, I mentioned that I’ve used chatGPT to teach me how to create a rating system that I could implement into my final project.
  7. Answering a question in class or in Discord No, I’ve never had to use chatGPT to answer questions in class or discord, not like I reply to the discord anyway….
  8. Asking or answering a smart-question No, if I wanted to use AI to teach me to ask a smart-question I feel it’s better to ask the AI itself the question I had instead of having it teach me how to ask a question that might not even get an answer, or get an answer that doesn’t fully solve my problems.
  9. Coding example e.g. “give an example of using Underscore .pluck” My use of AI was especially prominent during the beginning of the semester where we were learning how to use underscore and all of its functions. During the week we first learned it I’ve had to ask AI numerous times to explain how each function works and how to implement it, especially during the WODS.
  10. Explaining code I’ve never had to use AI to explain code yet, since there hasn’t been any code that was too difficult to understand.
  11. Writing code That was mostly all that I’ve used AI for. Writing code and understanding concepts were the only things I’ve ever used AI for and so more than half of the entire time I have been using AI was all to write code.
  12. Documenting code I’ve never needed to use AI to document code. I thought it was necessary for me to understand and do all the documentation by hand, because if I don’t know how to use my website and guide people how to use it, can I really even say that I created it?
  13. Quality assurance No, I’ve never used AI for quality assurance before, that’s mostly due to the fact that quality assurance isn’t even on my mind during the WODS, the only thing I was worried about was if I had enough time to submit the WOD, and if my program even runs correctly.
  14. Other uses in ICS 314 not listed above Other than what I’ve listed above I don’t think there are any other times I’ve used AI.

III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:

I actually think AI is beneficial to learning and understanding to an extent, AI should be a tool for programmers to learn topics and expand our knowledge, and not a crutch that can write and analyze all your code for you. AI is so beneficial for self teaching since the way it explains difficult concepts is easy to understand and even if you can’t understand it you could always ask it to explain it in an easier manner without worrying about what the other “person” is thinking, and if you don’t understand something you can keep asking questions about it until you eventually do understand, AI will never get tired of listening to you, it wants to be your friend and help you understand. I’ve had AI save me on countless occasions not in this class, but in algorithms, when I couldn’t understand the topics that were being presented to me, and AI explains everything in an easy to understand way compared to the textbooks that I’m forced to be reading.

IV. Practical Applications:

Outside of this class, AI actually has a lot of potential useful properties, besides teaching yourself anything you want for any topic you want. Implementing AI into video games is the next biggest thing, and will revolutionize the video game industry. Especially right now with the development of virtual reality, combining the 2 features can really be the next breakthrough.

V. Challenges and Opportunities:

As useful as AI is, it’s not perfect, there are more than some kinks that need to be worked out for it to be perfect. For example, for complex problems AI struggles to grasp it and develop a consistent solution, especially with something as conceptual as algorithms, AI struggles to answer even the simplest of questions, since it can’t handle complex and abstract problems. Another issue regarding AI is morality, since AI is still a machine in the end, it has no sense of morals, so giving it a hypothetical where it would have to choose one life over many would cause the machine to break as it could not handle questions about the human psyche. Relating to our current final project for 314, AI can’t take a look at all of your files when asking questions about an app in development. So it can only give you an answer that best fits that current file and it doesn’t know how all of the other files look. But there is an upside, if AI can learn to take on arithmetic and abstract problems, it would take AI to the next level.

VI. Comparative Analysis:

Teaching should benefit greatly from the production of AI, I say should, because it should be used to help learn concepts and not do the work for the students. And there is no surefire way to identify the use of AI even when you tell the students not to use it, so there’s no real way to enforce the no AI guidelines. And there’s always going to be more and more things to learn as time goes on, so expecting students to learn more by using the same teaching techniques that were used 5-10 years ago isn’t going to work. Having something like AI that can help the students understand these topics better will ultimately help them retain more knowledge as well, why memorize something when you can simply understand how it works. And when students understand something they’re more likely to engage more in the class and be a more active participant. And yes constant use of AI can lead to relying on it, but that’s just those that are abusing the tool rather than using it to support them, AI can help build the skills to eventually ask smart-questions, to not be scared to actually ask for help from their peers, and ask meaningful questions.

VII. Future Considerations:

AI is going to keep growing regardless of whether teachers in the future want to implement it into the course work or not. Not to say that teachers will be replaced and that will never happen because there needs to be a basic level of understanding to even use AI to help you with work. With no prior knowledge AI is about as useful as a graphic calculator given to a preschooler. The implementation of AI for future teachers would benefit learning for all students, letting them teach themselves is more likely to retain than when they’re mindlessly jotting down the notes. Obviously with letting students use AI also means the reliance on AI to solve all of their problems would also skyrocket, there will be many students who won’t learn the necessary problems solving skills since AI will solve everything for them, and when AI eventually can’t solve the abstract problem, those students will be stuck,

VIII. Conclusion:

Overall, AI is not something that should be feared, it should be a tool that people use to help them, and it should not be the main source of learning, as you develop a reliance to using the AI and won’t be able to build the necessary skills for the future courses where AI can’t and won’t help you. I think the way that we’re learning how to use AI in 314 is the best possible way to go at this, the use of AI isn’t encouraged but it is ok as long as you state that you used AI.

Overall, AI is not something that should be feared, it should be a tool that people use to help them, and it should not be the main source of learning, as you develop a reliance to using the AI and won’t be able to build the necessary skills for the future courses where AI can’t and won’t help you. I think the way that we’re learning how to use AI in 314 is the best possible way to go at this, the use of AI isn’t encouraged but it is ok as long as you state that you used AI.