Yu Fang Ma

Can AI be your good friend?

07 May 2024

I. Introduction

AI (artificial intelligence) has come out and become popular in recent years. AI is not only being used in the technology field but is also applied in many different areas. One of the areas in which AI is being used is education. Many people will use AI to help them teach more efficiently. AI can help educators plan teaching plans, have a better connection with students, and also benefit students by tutoring them and using data analysis to find out what kinds of problems most students may have a difficult time with.

Using AI in Software Engineering has also happened in recent years. The advantages of AI like high efficiency and innovative solutions have made software engineers keep using it to help them finish the work and achieve the goal.

Since AI is a tool that come up in recent years, I’m still not getting deep into it. The only AI that I’m using generally and in ICS 314 is Grammarly which is an AI that helps people check their grammar when they write.

II. Personal Experience with AI:

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

  1. Experience WODs e.g. E18

  2. In-class Practice WODs

  3. In-class WODs

  4. Essays

  5. Final project

  6. Learning a concept / tutorial

  7. Answering a question in class or in Discord

  8. Asking or answering a smart-question

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

  10. Explaining code

  11. Writing code

  12. Documenting code

  13. Quality assurance

  14. Other uses in ICS 314 not listed above

For this class, the only moment that I will use AI is when I’m typing (writing) essays, and I only use AI to help me check my grammar rather than help me type the whole essay. The reason why I used AI to help me check my grammar is because I want to let the readers better understand what I’m trying to express. I will use AI to help me fix my grammar and come up with more clear and complete sentences for readers to read. The only cost for using AI in writing is that sometimes, AI will misunderstand what I’m trying to express and fix the sentences into other meanings. Therefore, every time we use AI, we should also check what it gives to us by ourselves, and not just accept everything.

The items 1 to 3 listed above are all related to WODs. I don’t like to use AI while I’m doing WOD since doing WODs is a good chance for me to explore new things, understand my coding ability, and train myself to finish a challenge at a specific time. Although using AI can help people finish WODs more quickly, the cost of it is that we may not truly understand the concept and knowledge.

The items 6 to 8 and 13 listed above are all related to learning, asking, and answering. I put them together because I think people will ask questions while they are learning, and be able to answer questions when they complete learning and fully understand the concept. As I mentioned before, I am still used to the original learning methods that I had before. Every time I have a question while learning the materials, I like to search online to see if someone is discussing it rather than directly asking AI.

For the rest of the items related to coding, I also didn’t use AI because of the reasons listed above. Although I didn’t use AI too much in this class, especially in the coding part, I think using AI can help people efficiently finish coding and be able to solve problems when having a difficult time.

III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:

The reason why many teachers do not want students to use AI to help finish their homework is because of the idea of learning and understanding. AI can help student finish their work, but if a student only uses AI to help them finish their work and does not truly understand the knowledge, this will cause a big problem. On the other hand, if people use AI wisely, it will benefit them a lot since AI has good problem-solving, skill development, and comprehension abilities. AI technologies can enhance or challenge a person’s understanding of software engineering concepts depending on how people use it and the attitude they have when using it.

IV. Practical Applications:

AI has been used in many real-world projects and is deeply related to people’s lives. It can be used in items like smartphones and social media that people use daily, it can applied in banking and finance areas to help do the analyzing, and it can also applied to health areas that help keep track of human health. AI can also be used to address real-world software engineering challenges since the large database AI has can help analyze problems that the human brain is not able to solve.

V. Challenges and Opportunities:

There isn’t any big challenge or limitation that I have faced when using AI in this class. Since the only AI I use in this class is Grammarly, I would say that the only limitation I faced is that I need to pay money to get premium suggestions for grammar checks. The only challenge that I faced was that AI may be wrong in understanding what I was trying to express. But I think those things are not a big deal since I can still use AI to help me check some parts of grammar, and I can look at the change to see if there is a misunderstanding. Considering only the advantages of AI, I think there are potential opportunities for further integration of AI in software engineering education.

VI. Comparative Analysis:

The traditional teaching methods in the context of software engineering education can be reading textbooks, watching teaching videos, and hearing other people explain the concept. On the other hand, the AI-enhanced approach will be people typing anything they want to ask AI to AI, and AI will reply to them with the answer. The difference between these two methods is that the speed of traditional teaching methods is slow compared to using AI to learn. But some of the methods in traditional teaching give people the chance to interact with other people and have a chance to hear what other people think.

VII. Future Considerations:

As the technology keeps developing, the ability of AI will grow also. I think there is a future for AI to be applied to education because it has the advantages that traditional learning methods don’t have. AI can become the role that gives people more ideas about coding and helps people code more efficiently. However, there are still some challenges and things that people need to be aware of regarding AI. One example is how can people make sure that they won’t over-reliance on AI and lose the ability to think critically.

VIII. Conclusion:

Overall, AI is a good tool that can be applied to different areas and aspects. AI can become a good friend to humans when people know how to use AI wisely. The attitude people have when using AI and the way they use AI are important key points that help connect the good relationship between humans and AI.