Jason Nguyen

The Ethics and Future of AI

07 May 2024

I. Introduction

“Hey have you heard of ChatGPT?”, those were the words that would change my college career forever. I was in the living room with my cousin who was tutoring me for Calculus 3 at the time. He casually brought up the topic of ChatGPT which I had never heard of before at the time. In that moment, I didn’t really think much of it. I still didn’t even really understand what it was. When he pulled it up and showed me the stuff that you can do with AI, I didn’t really see the point of it. “This just looks like a google search with more steps.”, I thought to myself. I figured the advantage of it was that it would compile all the information you wanted into one location so it was easier to process. The reason I thought this was because at the time, I didn’t realize how powerful AI was. For me, it was like a boomer listening to heavy metal for the first time. I didn’t understand it and I was stuck in the old ways. Later that day, I went back to ChatGPT and tried some more prompts. I put in some of my homework problems and lo and behold they were solved. My mind was blown. It was like seeing color for the first time on the television (at least that’s how I imagine it would be like). My whole world was turned upside down as I realized the amount of time and effort that would be saved with this new thing called ChatGPT.

II. Personal Experience with AI:

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

  1. Experience WODs e.g. E18 Since most Experience WODS have video tutorials underneath them explaining how to do them, I never really felt the need to use AI to complete them
  2. In-class Practice WODs Since these weren’t graded, I wanted to try to get as much practice in as possible. I would only use AI to see what it would implement and then figure it out by myself from there.
  3. In-class WODs Since these are worth 100 points each, AI was used quite a bit. Unfortunately, this backfired on me occasionally as some of the code that it spit out was completely useless. There was also a time where I was trying to figure out why a website wasn’t working but I realized the code was already there, I just had to log in.
  4. Essays Since essays are something that are very personal, I have never used AI for essays (in this class). We are also told explicitly not to use AI.
  5. Final project A good portion of my code was developed with the help of AI. Editing data with Mongo was not something I was very confident with so I needed assistance.
  6. Learning a concept / tutorial I have definitely used AI to teach me complex concepts in this class and others. For example, in ICS 311: Algorithms, I definitely asked ChatGPT to help me understand complex topics. Especially since you can ask it specific questions, it’s like having a personal tutor that you can ask anything without feeling embarrassed.
  7. Answering a question in class or in Discord I haven’t really used the class discord much to ask questions so no, I haven’t used AI for this.
  8. Asking or answering a smart-question See #7
  9. Coding example e.g. “give an example of using Underscore .pluck” I have definitely used AI to give me an example of code as a template in order for me to understand another set of code I was working on. I would do this so that I could practice the problem myself without giving away the answer completely.
  10. Explaining code I would only really ask ChatGPT to explain code that it gave me itself, since a lot of the times it doesn’t make sense.
  11. Writing code Oh boy, if I am ever feeling lazy, I’ll just ask it to write a block of code for me and I’ll just CtrlC + Ctrl V and hope it works.
  12. Documenting code I have never asked ChatGPT to document code for me but I might start.
  13. Quality assurance I’ve ran some essays through ChatGPT as a spell check and to ask for any suggestions to my essays.
  14. Other uses in ICS 314 not listed above None that I can think of!

III. Impact on Learning and Understanding:

The first and most obvious problem with ChatGPT is that it takes away the struggle. When I first started coding in highschool, the only way you could really cheat was stackoverflow. But that was a public forum so you would either need to find someone with the exact same problem as you (which is surprisingly common) or you would have to ask the question yourself. This wouldn’t always be the most helpful solution however so you would often times just be better of figuring out the problem by yourself. While this was a lot more difficult, for me personally, my problem solving skills were much better when I knew that I couldn’t just plug my problem into ChatGPT and get an instant answer. Nowadays, if I can’t figure it out within 5-10 minutes, I’ll just resort to the AI overlord. Secondly, AI makes a lot of assignments and online exams trivial. This reduces the stress when a test rolls around because you know you can just ChatGPT your way to a good grade most of the time resulting in the amount of learning you’re doing by a significant amount.

IV. Practical Applications:

Most useful applications of AI would be learning. ChatGPT is a really good tool for learning complex topics since you can ask it very specific questions and it will give you a thorough breakdown on it. Another useful application would be to do a simple task that doesn’t take any skill or thinking but would take a lot of time for a human. An example of this could possibly be changing all instances of a word in an essay to another. If you’re writing a story perhaps and decide that your MC’s name isn’t that fitting. Or if you wanted to capitalize all instances of a word. These are just some examples.

V. Challenges and Opportunities:

The problem with ChatGPT is that it’s producing lazy students (myself included) who don’t want to put in any effort into learning. Why learn when I can just ask the bot to do it for me for free in a fraction of the time? When presented with an easier path, what sane person wouldn’t take it? It takes a very disciplined person who thinks long term to see how doing things by yourself is a much better way to do things. Which is why with ChatGPT around, if you are able to avoid the temptation of asking it for answers, you will get very far in life.

VI. Comparative Analysis:

If you compare the difference between traditional teaching and AI teaching, on paper, traditional teaching is better in almost every way. A professor spent their entire life mastering their craft and is certified to teach. He can answer any question just like AI can and he won’t make any mistakes like AI. So why would you ever use AI? Well for starters, a professor has to manage a class of 30+ students. It is impossible for a human to answer every single question that each student may have individually. It is also hard to tell if every student understands the material since most are too embarrassed or shy to admit it. Also, professors are humans too. They can’t answer every question you may have 24/7. This is where AI comes in. While it isn’t a replacement for human teachers, they can fill the void when you have a specific question that nobody else can really help you with at that exact moment.

VII. Future Considerations:

Every day, AI just gets better and better. As it is right now, it still has a lot of flaws. It can’t answer every question perfectly and it struggles with math problems. However, with the speed at which AI is progressing, in 10 years, I could see AI being close to perfect. I wouldn’t be surprised if AI takes over most jobs soon, as they are already making AI that can make better AI. With so much being automated in the future, I can only hope that the government will recognize that and makes it so that humans simply don’t have to work anymore. Our AI overlords can do everything for us and we can sit back at home and relax. Of course this won’t happen anytime soon but in 100 years, I can gurantee that the world will be unrecognizable from the one we know today.

VIII. Conclusion:

In conclusion, AI is something that cannot be avoided. Whether you like it or not, AI will eventually take over your job. Whether you’re a teacher, a doctor, a factory worker, hell there’s even an AI youtuber. Nobody is safe, which is why you should be doing your part and keep up with the times. Learn how to use AI to your benefit while making sure you’re competent at your job. As a student, I definitely need to stop relying on ChatGPT so much as it is hindering my learning and skills as a software engineer.