Due: Fri, Feb 2nd in class Late assignments will be penalized 20% per day.

ChatGPT

Objective

The student will ask ChatGPT questions relevant to course content, and analyze the answers for correctness and creativity.

Resources

AI Bill of Rights (2022): Available on Canvas, or at https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/ai-bill-of-rights/

Background

The time is now upon us! Artificial Intelligence has developed to the point that it can understand and carry out instructions in normal language format. AI can generate programs, summarize articles, do extensive searches, and many other professional tasks. It also has its limits, some of which are still being discovered. This lab investigates the vast possibilities and potential risks of using artificial intelligence to learn programming. Students will ask questions specifically related to the course material. The responses could potentially be written at a level that is too complex for student understanding. The point of this assignment is to experiment with the capacity of ChatGPT and how it can serve as a tool for learning content as well as completing tasks.

ChatGPT - Benefits and Warnings

We now live in a world where a program can interpret verbal instructions into algorithms. With only a little knowledge, people can write programs, create websites, draw intricate pictures, create music, and many other tasks. This kind of capability has never before been even a consideration to society, other than robots and droids of science fiction.

Naturally, with this capability, education will be enhanced at an unprecedented level. Each student can have their own personal tutor that helps with every topic. With experimentation, there could be untold ways an AI-assisted classroom can be quite effective. This may not be a surprise to anybody, but it will still be jolting when AI fully kicks in. At some point, the question may be raised whether human teachers are truly necessary anymore. However, with these benefits is the other side of the proverbial coin.

If ChatGPT can help students learn, it is equally capable at helping students bypass the pedagogical security (a.k.a cheating). Students will be able to write papers, summarize articles and books, draw pictures, and create music, all with just a few sentences. The problem is, the goal of learning is to acquire new skills. ChaptGPT speeds up the process to the point that learning is not taking place.

At the same time, it can be a benefit to know how to use ChatGPT to get things done faster. The real world will certainly appreciate experience in this skill. So, what are we, as teachers, to do with these last few years before the profession is regarded irrelevant? The decisions we make now will affect all of education in the future.

Completing Tasks vs. Learning Skills

It is beneficial to students to mentally distinguish between learning a skill and completing a task. When completing a task, success is measured by the result given. How good of a project is this submission? However, completing a task does not fully represent whether the task can be repeated again successfully. If a student completes a task without learning how to do it, they may not be able to do it a second time. Competing tasks and learning skills are important, and are related to each other, but both must be accomplished for a successful education of the topic. If a teaching style is based only on competing tasks, the students may not learn fully, simply using ChatGPT to complete tasks without learning how to replicate the work.

By separating tasks from learning skills, both can be covered separately. Students are instructed to complete tasks, with the idea that completing them will result in learning. Then students are tested in ways that ChatGPT is not available. To demonstrate learning, students must show they can complete the task without help.

Of course, it must be acknowledged that using the ChatGPT system itself is a skill that must be learned and tested. There is an overlap that can be addressed, but should not be used as an excuse to use ChatGPT for everything. At the root, students must be able to complete work with and without help from ChatGPT.

In terms of exacts, here are some common teaching practices that will help limit negative effects of ChatGPT.

Testing should be handwritten only and in-class only. ChatGPT is easily available on any device, with or without the internet.
Submitting assignments should be more about the student demonstrating the skill learned, rather than the task completed. Grading should be a multi-stage process that ensures at all stages the student is doing the work properly. Papers should be completed incrementally with edited drafts, rather than all at once. Programs should be demonstrated by the students directly, either to the teacher one-on-one, to the class as a presentation, or as a video screen capture. Simply turning in the work puts too much burden on the teacher, and provides the opportunity to bypass grade security. Have the student demonstrate that the task is successful, and it that can be done again.
Ensure students are aware of the difference between completion and learning. ChatGPT can have benefits to both, but it should not be abused.

Your Task

Download, read, and memorize the entire Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights. All 70+ pages of it. Or, just skim through it. Know that this document exists, what it is generally about, and how it could shape the field of programming.
Create an account on ChatGPT. Be able to ask it questions and analyze the responses.
Start a new conversation with ChatGPT. Ask ChatGPT a series of generic questions. Keep the questions lighthearted and easy to understand. The responses should be easy to analyze for correctness and creativity. This is just to get used to the ChatGPT system, and does not need to be submitted.
The course syllabus should list the topics to be covered in class. Decide on three relevant topics to cover in a conversation with ChatGPT. The topics should be directly relevant to the course in question. See below for a list of example questions.
Have three separate conversations with ChatGPT addressing the topics in some detail. Ask multiple follow-up questions to add clarity or summarize details. The answers generated may not be what was expected. The overall goal is to test the limits of what relevant course topics can be generated by ChatGPT.
Copy and paste the relevant conversations into a word processor, e.g. Google Doc, for editing.
Edit the responses, and eliminate any irrelevant material. It may be necessary to abbreviate long responses, as they could be quite large. Test ChatGPT of both conceptual knowledge and the ability to write programs.
Within the document, take notes on the responses given. Use the highlighter tool to identify notes as separate from the conversation. Comment on the correctness and creativity of the ChatGPT responses.
Upload the conversation document in PDF form to Canvas.

Analyze for Correctness

Part of the requirement for this lab is to analyze the responses given for correctness. Indicate whether the responses are correct, nearly correct, or significantly incorrect. Come up with ways to detect the correctness, through fact-checking, calculations, or just in agreeance with personal knowledge.

Analyze for Creativity

Creativity among AI is a controversial topic. Does AI have actual creativity (like a human), or is it just retelling what it has already encountered? Provide conjecture on where the AI got the material. One could even ask ChatGPT itself where it got the information.

Example Questions - Generic

Write an illustrated short story about a roller coaster made out of celery.
What is the best Mexican restaurant within ten miles of York College campus?
What should I do tonight?
Answer the following question while speaking like a pirate:
I want to get into superhero movies. What movies of the last twenty or so years are the most definitive for the genre?
My teenage son suffers from screen addiction. What are some ways to treat this condition?
I have taken CS101 and CS201 at York College. What courses should I take next to complete a degree in computer engineering?
York Peppermint Patties were named after York, PA, Hanover Pretzels were originally made in Hanover, PA. And naturally, the Hershey chocolate company is based in Hershey, PA. Are there any other products named after cities in Pennsylvania?
What are the words to the Gettysburg Address, in alphabetical order?
Name all presidents of the United States, sorted in order by time served as president.

Example Questions - CS360

What is an algorithm?
Provide an example of an algorithm to sort an array of integers.
What is the Big Oh (order) of a nested for-loop, each running n times?
What is a greedy algorithm? Give some examples of greedy algorithm.
How can I use Excel to show that an algorithm is O(nlgn) asymptotically?
Create an animation or diagram that explains how heapsort works.
How does one record execution time of programs in Java and C++?

Alternates to AI

Large language models such as ChatGPT should not be taken lightly. It is still unknown what potential side effects can occur from using AI. As such, there are alternate instructions for a student wishing to complete the lab and assignment without the use of ChatGPT. See the instructor to discuss alternate instructions. However, using these alternate instructions does not alleviate the student from learning about ChatGPT and its potential functionality in the industry.