Natalie Ching

AI: A Honey Trap For Students

07 May 2024

I. Introduction

Artificial intelligence is something my generation both loves and fears. AI’s defining characteristic is its ability to think and act like humans and mirror our intelligence. Applications such as ChatGPT demonstrate the competence and power that AI provides to its user. The convenience of being able to ask almost any question and get an immediate, concise answer generated back, without having to sift through websites on your own, is the reason why many students use AI for their schoolwork. When I first started college, artificial intelligence and ChatGPT was very new and intimidating to me. I believed using it was cheating and wrong because I never experienced using AI in highschool and felt bitter hearing about how so many students used it to easily complete assignments that I would spend hours of my own time trying to do. It wasn’t until I got to college and had classmates that I respected as hard working, good students that encouraged me and talked about their use of ChatGPT to help do their homework. However, the convenience and ease of using the application is dangerous because the user can fall into the trap of blindly following what it says as truth and fact.

II. Personal Experience with AI:

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

  1. Experience WODs e.g. E18

I would sometimes use ChatGPT when completing experience WODs because AI can be useful in helping me see problems from a different angle when I get stuck. Sometimes I just need to hear the question rephrased to make it click in my head. I usually didn’t have to use ChatGPT often because I could just watch the webcast if I got really stuck on a problem.

  1. In-class Practice WODs

This is also just a sometimes situation for me when it comes to using ChatGPT. I would turn to it if I got really stuck on a prompt. However, since I learn best from making mistakes, I would try to “struggle through” our in class practice WODs so I knew where I needed to prepare and improve on before Thursday’s in-class WOD.

  1. In-class WODs

I feel like at some point, I started to turn to ChatGPT a little too often when it came to in-class WODs. I would always attempt to do the WOD by myself first and only allow myself to use ChatGPT if it was coming down to the wire and there were only a few minutes left. However, I got used to the ease that came with using AI and became weak so that when the WODs became more difficult when we started using Meteor and React, I would get lazy and just want to have ChatGPT do as much of the heavy lifting as possible. As time went on, I started to realize that even though ChatGPT was really helpful, it would make small careless mistakes that ended up costing me a lot of extra time in the long run. Eventually, I went back to my original strategy of trying to do the WOD on my own and then using ChatGPT to help me if I got stuck or checked if I had any bugs in my code.

  1. Essays

I rarely use ChatGPT or AI when it comes to writing essays because I enjoy the writing process. Only recently did I use ChatGPT in another class to help extend my essay to help me reach a word-count requirement. It also helped me organize my thoughts and ideas faster when writing. I tried to just free-write and get everything I wanted to convey down on paper without having to worry about the flow, organization, or structure of my writing. I copy-pasted my long paragraph of ideas and asked ChatGPT to help me organize my thoughts. Even though I am confident that I could do it myself, it was just much faster and more convenient to have it be done through AI.

  1. Final project

I used ChatGPT to help me write code for our final project because there were many aesthetic applications that I wanted to implement that we didn’t learn how to do in class. In order to make our website stand out, I decided to take advantage of ChatGPT as a tool to help me bring my ideas and visions to life on screen.

  1. Learning a concept / tutorial

As I mentioned above, I used ChatGPT to help teach me how to add animation to our website and image carousel to make it more dynamic. I would ask it to give me the basic skeleton of code so I could build off of it and customize it how I wanted.

  1. Answering a question in class or in Discord

Unfortunately, I didn’t interact with the class Discord very much because I was too intimidated. I don’t know everyone in the chat so I was afraid of being judged or embarrassed if I made a mistake.

  1. Asking or answering a smart-question

I never asked AI for help when asking or answering a smart-question in the Discord. However, I probably asked ChatGPT many stupid questions because I wasn’t afraid of it judging me or having to feel embarrassed.

  1. Coding example e.g. “give an example of using Underscore .pluck”

I would often need help formatting my images and different HTML elements. I would have to ask ChatGPT to give me examples of how I could write my code.

  1. Explaining code

When I needed help writing my code for the final project, I would ask ChatGPT to explain the code it gave me so I could understand it better. This way, I could customize my code further and make it look how I wanted.

  1. Writing code

I often used AI to help me write code if I already knew how to write it but didn’t want to bother to type it out. ChatGPT can generate faster than I could type and I would work on writing other code while it was generating that code. It helped cut down a lot of my manual coding time.

  1. Documenting code

I never used ChatGPT to help me document code because it wasn’t necessary for me.

  1. Quality assurance

I used ESLint to make sure my code was up to standard and sometimes I would have to ask ChatGPT why I was getting ESLint errors and how I could fix them.

  1. Other uses in ICS 314 not listed above

I didn’t use in other ways that were not listed above.

III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:

I think that ChatGPT both helped and hindered my learning at times. It hurt my learning when I got lazy and used it as a crutch so I didn’t have to think much when doing an assignment. However, I soon learned that this strategy was detrimental to my learning and the whole purpose of why I am in school, so I had to go back and relearn how to do all the different things that I used ChatGPT for after the fact instead of just learning them at the moment when I could have during the assignment. On the other hand, when I was purposefully using ChatGPT to help me learn new things, it made my learning curve much steeper. I was able to learn concepts much faster, and if I got stuck, it helped me get out of my learning rut more efficiently if I was just on my own. I know some teachers think that my generation is being spoon-fed material and that we need to struggle in order to improve, but I think that using AI as a learning tool is much more time-efficient, and allows me to do more beyond just the basics.

IV. Practical Applications:

Since this class was much less restrictive in its view towards the use of AI, it allowed me to see how it could be used in everyday practical applications as a software engineer. Even though useful resources like freeCodeCamp exist, AI still allowed me to ask questions if I was confused about something. I was able to go back and forth like how I would with a teacher. This communication aspect and being able to have this back-and-forth was what really accelerated my learning. I can see this being helpful in the workforce if you are asked to code something you are unfamiliar with or in a language you don’t know. Deadlines exist and life is always happening around us, so the acceleration in the learning curve that AI can provide for us is really valuable.

V. Challenges and Opportunities:

One challenge that AI presented me was the temptation of just trusting it and letting it do everything for me. I found that it still makes errors and isn’t all-knowing because it mimics humans, and we aren’t perfect or all-knowing. However, if it makes a mistake, many times it won’t catch it or give any indication that it might have. This meant that I had to be careful and not trust everything that it gave me as correct. Sometimes the errors that it would cause would take me longer to fix than if I just tried to do it myself, so AI wasn’t always the most efficient route to take every time. I had to be mindful of what I was putting in my code and what it was spitting out, constantly checking that what I was working with was correct. Although this was a challenge, it presented an opportunity for me to learn because I couldn’t trust the AI every time. I had to know the material well myself in order to get the best results out of using it. It didn’t fully allow me to get away with just using it as a crutch or an easy way out. It showed me the potential of how much I could do if I learned the material well, so I could work with the AI to go beyond.

VI. Comparative Analysis:

I don’t think that AI is skilled enough to replace the traditional learning techniques that we have established in our education system. From what I have seen in my experience of using AI as a learning tool for the past semester, it would not have been as useful if we didn’t have the knowledge and base that we gained from doing practice/experience WODs or watching the screencasts. I truly only got the best out of AI when I was dealing with things that I learned about in class. The basis and general understanding that I got from the class enabled me to use AI as a tool, but I don’t think it would work the other way around. I don’t think I could start with AI and then gain more knowledge out of the class. It cannot replace the learning experience but rather enhances it.

VII. Future Considerations:

I will take what I learned from this class about my relationship with AI through my academic and professional career. I know now that I cannot lean on it too hard or depend on it fully because it will fail me. This is valuable to know now instead of finding out later if I am working on a high-stakes project. I think that this class helped me clarify my relationship with AI and what its place is in my learning journey. I know that I will continue to use AI applications like ChatGPT in my education as a learning tool, not as a crutch. I won’t judge others so harshly for using it because I have seen how useful it can be when used correctly and not abused. I think that in the future, I will continue to grow and I am interested to see how AI develops as well. I wonder if it will become powerful enough to do everything I can do on its own, but I am not hopeful that this will be the case in the near future from what I have seen.

VIII. Conclusion:

I think that it was important for me to learn more about AI instead of just avoiding it. I believe that it is going to be a big part of our lives and something that our upcoming workforce is going to have to be literate in when it comes to any industry. In other words, I don’t think AI is avoidable, so it was good that I was able to learn about it and work through my relationship with it when it comes to my learning and work ethic now instead of having to go through this process later in my academic and professional career.