Robert Maddox

AI: Fascination or Fear

07 May 2024

I. Introduction

Artificial Intelligence has become an incredibly controversial tool in the technological landscape. Difficulties arise in the morality of using such a tool. Where some compare it to any other software assistant others heavily argue against its use. Regardless of stance it’s a piece of modern techonology that has increasingly become an integral part of our daily lives. As AI continues to evolve and integrate into various aspects of modern day products and software, its ethical implications are scrutinized more than ever. Most arugably the fear of AI being used as a replacement to people due to its incredibly cheap costs. It’s comprehensive abilities are truly impressive and prove that it has its usefulness.

II. Personal Experience with AI:

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

  1. Experience WODs - Truthfully I never felt the need to utilize ChatGPT for experience WODs. While I did hurry during the timer, if I ever ran out of time I’d just restart. If I was ever too stuck then I’d refer to the solution video. My preference would be to withness the professor’s solution in an attempt to adopt their styles and answers. I felt that it was better to learn their optimal solutions that could be reused for future Experience WODs as opposed to ChatGPTs specific solutions that oftened strayed from the teachings of the class.

  2. In-class Practice WODs - ChatGPT did aid in practice WODs further down the line. Initially I was entirely against using AI for any assignments. I felt the need to challenge myself in the class. For the Practice WODs earlier in the semester they were simple enough to get by. Towards the latter half I did notice I was using ChatGPT to help primarily for small syntax errors. Like finding missing semicolons or mispelled methods or blocks. In that regard it was incredibly helpful if the IDE was unable to pick it up. Especially in a time sensitive situation like Practice WODs. Outside of small syntax I preferred not to use ChatGPT. Practice WODs felt like a space to comfortably challenge myself without the risk of tanking a grade. I could use the entire allotted time to fully attempt to complete it with my knowledge.

  3. In-class WODs - In-Class WODs were somewhat of a different story. Similarly to the practice WODs I didn’t utilize ChatGPT for the former half of the semester. I was still in the headspace of challenging myself without the aid of AI. Towards the latter half I did start to see the usefulness and the struggles that came from it. For the simpler prompts it did aid in just verifying that the code should work as expected, however given the latter halfs more complex prompts it struggled heavily with producing the desired outcomes and in some cases made the WODs more challenging. Specifically looking at the website design WODs, ChatGPT had no access or understanding of what the visual elements needed to look like. This created a difficult environment to work with and I felt I was better off preparing for the WOD before hand with the practice WODs.

  4. Essays - Writing essays with the aid of AI has been a thing before ChatGPT. Grammarly is a popular grammar tool that was heavily popularized and aimed towards students to help ensure that their essays were cohesive and well-written. While I didn’t personally use grammarly, I used ChatGPT in a very similar manner to review my essay and ensure that the ideas presented made sense. Ever since ChatGPT’s popularization, it’s been a commonly used tool to just outright write the essays for students. I never used in this way because, 1. Trackers already exist that can predict what percentage of the essay was written using AI, 2. AI cannot replicate one’s writing style. Everyone has their own means of writing and if I had ChatGPT simply write mine then it would exactly be my own thoughts behind the words.

  5. Final project - Honestly I haven’t used ChatGPT in the slightest for the final project. I think that any of the issues that have arised within the final project are beyond ChatGPT’s abilities. This goes back to it’s inabilities to comprehend visual elements which the Final Project for this class mostly consists of. Even for the non-visual elements, if I really needed help I just referred to previous assignments and experiences. For the sake of this project I don’t see myself finding any usefulness in ChatGPT.

  6. Learning a concept / tutorial - ChatGPT was actually pretty helpful in this regard. Specifically for learning how a lot of the HTML components and elements worked. For example, when I was learning about the header and footer elements. I simply asked it how they worked and what it would look like in an example. It then gave me a small description of what they were and how they’re used then provided an example block of code that while simple really helped illustrate how to write it out.

  7. Answering a question in class or in Discord - For the discussions it was kind of a no brainer just to ask ChatGPT the discussion questions. While I never really used ChatGPT as a basis for personally answering the question it was interesting to see how it answered questions. Typically its answers were non-biased and provided a two sided perspective to display both sides of an answer. There were some instances where it was insistent on its correctness while the professor stated that the returned answer was incorrect. I was unable to find the exact prompt in the ChatGPT history but I do remember that during the discussion the professor discussed how AIs like ChatGPT will not be in entire agreement with the status quo of a community. In our case it was a question regarding an aspect of programming that programmers had a different opinion on than ChatGPT.

  8. Asking or answering a smart-question - Asking or answering smart questions to me never seemed like a process to get ChatGPT involved with. I suppose you could give it the parameters provided on the ICS website and then have it answer or verify a question to ensure that it follows the parameters. When in doubt I just referred back to these parameters to make sure I was following the process to answer or ask smart questions. It didn’t take long for me to understand how to properly ask or answer these questions, mainly because I was already familiar with expectations when asking or answering on a support board and the specifics required within the question. For that reason I didn’t utilize ChatGPT in those instances because I was already comfortable exercising smart questions and answers.

  9. Coding example - Being able to write examples of codes was very helpful in the class. Similar to learning new concepts, it being able to provide coding examples aided in my comprehension of new functions and libaries.

  10. Explaining code - ChatGPT was pretty helpful throughout the semester when it came to explaining blocks of code. Specifically I needed help explaining a function that utilized .pluck, .uniq, and .value . After asking how to implement that function it provided a breakdown of the implementation that explanined all three functions.

  11. Writing code - Similar to above, when I asked it to help explain a function that utilied those three functions it actually wrote a block of code that utilized those functions. I’ve used it similarly in that regard when I needed help completing or fixing errors in functions.

  12. Documenting code - I never ended up using ChatGPT to document my code. Usually it felt like it didn’t know how to properly document and I ended up documenting everything myself. While it does have a uniform method of documentation, it was usually very simple and lacked enough depth for others to understand what the comments and other documentations mean.

  13. Quality assurance - This goes back to my previously listed usage of syntax correction. To expand a little upon that would be checking for any redundancy, to make sure my code is optimal in its operations. While I did have a few instance where I wanted it to verify that my code had no repeats and ran optimally I didn’t check it every time.

  14. Other uses in ICS 314 not listed above - No questions were asked or utilized outside of the above use cases.

III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:

Having access to something that could always provide answers definitely aided in my learning throughout the course. Especially when I could ask it code specific questions that were related to assignments in the class. It was confusing looking at support boards that asked questions that only slightly mirrored my situation, so the answers were either slightly helpful or not at all. ChatGPT for the most part could answer any questions that I had regarding subjects throughout the course.

IV. Practical Applications:

In the context of this class, AI has many practical applications. Like I said before, it has uses for verifying code, aiding in problem solving, or just outright completing the code for the user. Outside of that, there are still so many more uses. An incredibly common application that is used by almost every person in the world is the AI algorithms behind social media. Regardless of what media you use, there’s always an algorithm determining what should be show to the user based on interests, age, race, etc. Music is another interesting facet that AI has started growing within. Mixing for example can be done with just AI, while the questions of ethics do spur as a result, I’d argue that for newcoming musicians, AI can aid in their beginning productions.

V. Challenges and Opportunities:

Just like most things, AI is not perfect. This class definitely illustrated that towards the latter half when it came to website design. While the code that lacks typically visual elements is no issue for coding AI assistants, anything that involves any kind of graphic design poses a struggle to AI services. Simply because it’s an entirely new media that AI is not sophisticated enough to recreate. While we have image creation AI, the actual programming that is required for the visual elements is still very simplistic. I don’t doubt that it will eventually catch up to being able to accurately reproduce the coding behind websites. Just looking at AI music producers, in 2019 the music sounded inhuman. You couldn’t fool anyone that it was made by real people. Nowadays it can produce scarily accurate music that could confuse audiences.

VI. Comparative Analysis:

I don’t think that we’ll see AI replacing professors or teachers at all. Being able to feel comfortable in the learning environment is vital to proper retention and knowledge growth. While AI can be a helpful aid in learning key concepts and ideas of the course, it cannot create a properly structured curriculum that only a human can tailor for the students. For example, an AI may try to follow the curriculum to a tee to ensure that the schedule is completed on time. A teacher on the other hand might provide extra credit to make up for a rushed week or drop some assignments to accomodate for any events.

VII. Future Considerations:

AI can still be a useful for students. As previously stated, when students need to seek aid but potentially don’t have the time to attend any after hour programs it can a helpful tutor supplement. Especially when the question may seem menial. I think AI will get better at aiding in tutoring students because it can provide tailor made responses and explanations to help garner understandings of concepts similar to how teachers create methods. The ideal situation would be to utilize both teachers and AI to maximize a students success in a learning environment.

VIII. Conclusion:

This course taught me that while AI can offer substantial help in specific areas like debugging, code verification, and problem solving, it cannot replace humans in the learning environment or just the coding environment in general. It has chances to fail in design and complex decision making where humans simply best it. While these may seem like negatives I think it is a good balanced relationship to have. At the end of the day it should be used as a tool and should not replace the special abilities only a human can make. In the classroom setting it is a great supplement that can help students cement ideas prevalent throughout the class. With that said, because AI is beginning to become a clutch for some classes it’s important that awareness is spread on how to effectively utilize AI to not only maximize its potential, but allow growth within the student.