Artificial Intelligence, a tool that has changed the way the entire globe looks at our future, and how we interact with education. Whether it is using AI to write exams, AI to check if AI has written exams, or AI making videos to deceive the public, the application of this tool is incredibly vast. In education primarily in the last two years alone it has changed how school operates from Elementary through University. With AI you can use it to aid in your understanding of incredibly complex topics, using it to teach you how to program or learn high level technical classes. On the other end you can use it to cheat your way through most classes and use it to get good grades without having to learn much material at all.
In my experience however, I have used it pretty frequently, as an aspiring programmer I have used to give me guidance. When I have seemingly dug myself a hole I am not even aware that I am in, I use it to help me get out. For particular examples when we were doing the Digits experiences and I was working with things I had not really worked with before and did not really understand I used AI to help. For me I would use tools like Claude, and ChatGPT to help break down some of the concepts we were learning in a way that made it easier for me to understand. This is how I would use it for the assignments like the Practice WODS, Experience WODS, and Final Project where we are getting our hands on new technologies and I wanna further develop my understanding on them. When I would have smart questions it was split, sometimes I would refer to AI answers other times I would use google to browse things like the Bootstrap site, Stack Overflow and other forms online. Furthermore I would also use AI for quality assurance as well when I would run into ESLint errors that I would prefer not to comment out and fix but I was unsure of how to fix myself.
Times I would try and refrain from using AI was during the in class WODs, writing code, explaining code, and documenting code. For the first two, it was mostly because I wanted time to test my understanding of the material, however if I felt that I was cornered I would use it sparingly. As for explaining code and documenting code I feel most AI have a problem with either under explaining/documenting code or over explaining/documenting code so the times I did I would opt to do the writing myself. As for explaining the new concepts however I would request it do that form though. Additionally I do not believe I ever used AI while writing my essays other than a few times when I used to check if my essays were clear enough.
Overall I believe AI has helped me learn especially when it came to concepts I was having an especially hard time with. However with that comes the problem that sometimes when you run into an issue there is a temptation to just throw it into something like Claude to fix it for you. Another challenge would be overusing AI and trusting it entirely. Since most of the time AI does not have access to your entire project and has the full context it may try implementations or suggest fixes that just cannot work in the environment you are creating. That itself brings to light the idea that how you use AI will be what differentiates good coders from average coders. The ability to work together in tandem to create instead of one or the other doing more than each other. AI has made the barrier for entry lower but the barrier of entry to become a great coder much higher. In the real world I believe things like Co Pilot and generative AI that is trained specifically to help with coding will certainly be commonplace. With AI the sheer volume of code that has the ability to be made is just higher than without it. In the future I think we will see the rise of more hands-off teaching methods that capitalize off of what AI can do and will lean heavily into AI lessons. This is a double edged sword because it does allow for students who learn differently to have lessons be explained like that. On the other hand I believe it can not be overstated the impact a good educator who has a passion for teaching has. When a teacher or professor truly cares for their craft and you can feel that enthusiasm it truly is infectious and that is something AI can not replace yet.
In conclusion AI has had a positive impact on my experience in software engineering. However I believe others should certainly hesitate more often and feel the struggle of learning before asking an AI. To me, in those hard moments when you are spending a long amount of time staring at Stack Overflow or VS code for ages. When you are going through pages and pages of documentation and your own old code. In those moments I think there is a lot to be learned, I think AI will help you save time for sure, even help you learn concepts quicker, but it will delay you learning the feeling of failing and how to overcome that feeling.