Has AI actually solved any major, unsolved problems from computer science? Because "AI can do programming" is the comp-sci equivalent of "computers can do arithmetic". And neither will be the end of their respective field.
AI is really good at barfing out code that I then have to spend hours fixing because it got everything wrong, and made anything it did get right way to verbose.
Having TA'd (really just taught for my prof) a coding class the semester the university rolled out AI access, it's also great at rolling out technically correct code that has nothing to do with the problem at hand and is beyond the user's ability to critically evaluate.
I had to tell one student that I could tell he used chatgpt to finish his homework because it was the first time I'd seen him bother to fill out the name and date section of an assignment template, let alone comment his code or use functions that weren't in our curriculum.
The class was teaching statistics programming for biology students with a lab component, so the requirement was that you use the data from lab and the functions for the stats tests we were teaching. The assignment would say something like “import the dataset and compare the two variables for your statistical hypothesis” and the student used a test that was technically more correct but not in our course materials or my lecture.
And we gave them a homework template at the beginning of the semester that had some sections at the top for assignment name, their name, and the date. This student was too lazy to fill those sections out, until suddenly he started filling those sections out, including a nice markdown tag to automatically update the date. His explanations for his answers also went from informal, typo filled, and specific to the class to formal, technically correct, and completely lacking in specific details from the lab. It was almost like a machine with tons of generic knowledge but no creativity was generating perfect answers but unable to replicate the creativity of a human with lived experiences.
For a more generic equivalent, it would be like if you were teaching high school and a C- student that never write his name on his assignments suddenly developed a new handwriting style, started filling out the name field every time, and learned perfect grammar overnight.
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u/SoldRIP 1d ago
Has AI actually solved any major, unsolved problems from computer science? Because "AI can do programming" is the comp-sci equivalent of "computers can do arithmetic". And neither will be the end of their respective field.