Overview

You may have heard of or used generative AI tools like ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemmi (shortened to AI or AI tools from now on). These are powerful tools that can enable your learning journey with CodeYourFuture (CYF).

These AI tools are not really intelligent. They are just very very good at guessing what words should come next in a sentence. They don’t understand the real world at all. They’re just good at pretending they do. This means they can make silly mistakes and make up things that don’t exist (hallucinations). For instance, up until fairly recently, many AI tools said there were two ‘r’s in the word strawberry. Most mistakes are not as funny or as obvious. For instance it is common for AI to make up names of code packages which don’t exist. Malicious packages even get created with names often generated by AI to exploit this.

This means that all output from AI is potentially untrustworthy. It’s especially hard to tell if AI code output is any good as a junior developer. You just haven’t built the understanding of what good code looks like yet - that comes with experience.

Despite all these downsides and risks, AI can be an amazing tool. The great majority of our teachers are volunteers, so their availability is limited. AI means that you now have a teacher at your fingertips whenever you get stuck. However, good teachers try to help you to understand and find the answers yourself. AI tools do not do this by default - they tend to simply give you the answer. This can make you think you’re progressing and understanding when you’re not. So, you need to use it correctly. You need to be careful to ask it to help you to learn the concepts, not to solve the problems. For instance it would be inappropriate to get it to do CYF coursework for you but it would be appropriate to get it to help you to understand a concept you’re struggling with.

Success at CYF is not about using AI to rush through the course and tick all the boxes. It’s about building a deep understanding of the concepts we teach for yourself. Using AI to do the work for you wastes everyone’s time. You will end the course without the coding skills you wanted (which means you won’t get a job) and our volunteers will have wasted their time marking AI work.

Questions

Question One

A CYF student is assigned coursework on a CYF course. The assignment is to build a homepage for a library which displays their twenty newest books. It requires that they use CSS Grid (a CSS feature used to display HTML elements in a grid format). They think that ChatGPT could help them complete this task.

Which of the prompts below is an appropriate use of AI?

1. Generate a webpage to display information about books in a grid format.
2. Use CSS Grid to build a webpage to display twenty digital books
3. Build a homepage for a library website 
4. I want to learn more about CSS Grid. Please explain the core concepts simply with examples.

Question Two

A CYF student asks an AI tool to help them understand a complex CSS topic. The information the AI gives doesn’t sound right.

Which of the below might be appropriate responses?

1. Googling the topic and look for reliable sources to clarify the point.
2. Trying to persuade the AI to check again.
3. Accepting this as the truth because the AI seemed to know what it was talking about.
4. Asking a volunteer whether the AI is right.
5. Asking another AI tool. 

Question Three

A CYF student balances fulltime work and family responsibilities with studying at CYF. They are struggling to keep up with the course. In particular, they are struggling to understand some fundamental concepts.

Which of the below are NOT appropriate responses?

1. Asking volunteers for guidance at a session
2. Giving an AI tool their assigned problems and ask it to solve them for them. They then copy and paste the output, making no edits.
3. Asking an AI tool to explain the concepts they find difficult to understand.
4. Attempting to solve the problems, then giving up asking an AI tool to fix their code. Then copying and pasting the answer without understanding the changes it made.
5. Using Google to find articles on the topics they are struggling with. 
6. Copying another student’s answers.
7. Sending a direct message to a active volunteer
8. Giving an AI tool their assigned problems and ask it to solve them for them. They then copy and paste the output, making small edits.

What Should You Do?

1. Create a Google Doc

1. Create a Google Doc
2. Place your answers for each of the questions above into the doc
3. Add one to three sentences explaining why you chose the answers you did

2. Put your name in the document name

Include your given name or your family name in the title of the Google Doc.

3. Make your Google Doc public

Change the sharing settings of your Google Doc to “Anyone with the link can view”.

4. Submit the Google Doc link

Submit the link to the Google Doc in Step 2 on the CYF Course Platform.

A volunteer will review your submission and check that it meets the acceptance criteria. They will give you feedback on your submission and help you make any changes needed to meet the criteria.

Here are the criteria you need to meet:

• You have answered all three questions
• You have provided one to three sentences explaining each answer

Submission

You must do this on the CYF Course Platform.

1. Submit a link to your Google Doc

When you have a question, ask it.

When you have questions about coursework, ask in a workshop🧶🧶 workshopCode Your Future Workshops are meetings where you can get technical help. or in Slack🧶🧶 SlackSlack is messaging software - once you have downloaded Slack you can visit our Slack workspace to ask your questions.

You do not need to wait for a workshop to ask a question. You can ask questions in Slack at any time. We are here to help you understand and complete this course. Our goal is to help you learn.

Further Reading

You do not have to read these resources, but you might find them interesting or useful

• Hey programmers – is AI making us dumber?
• UN Development Report - A Matter of Choice: People and Possibilities in the Age of AI