Dear Toby and all, I’ve been following this discussion over the last few days and would like to pick up on the idea of using genAI safely and responsibly for learning how to code.
I’m teaching text mining for social science and literary studies, starting from scratch with an introduction to Python, and we are getting asked by students whether they can use AI for their assignments, having resisted so far. I feel that we can’t stick our heads in the sand about this anymore though and pretend students won’t use it. So I agree that the best thing we can do as educators is teach students about how to use this tech safely and responsibly… while of course also making it clear to students that learning to code is like learning to cook but letting AI do it all for you is like using a ready cake mix that you just need to add water to and stick in the oven (a metaphor borrowed from my dear co-teacher Pawel Orzechowski). I think it is slightly more fitting than the recipe kit (suggested by someone else in the thread) where you at least still need to do a lot of the work yourself and some learning will take place. Saying that, having tried out prompting ChatGPT for some code myself, it does provide an explanation for what steps were taken or how it fixed a bit of code … even if it’s not always accurate in the solution it provides. So what does safe and responsible use of genAI actually mean in practice to people in this group? I’d be really interested to hear your thoughts on this. Best wishes, Bea ---------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Beatrice Alex Senior Lecturer and Chancellor’s Fellow University of Edinburgh Edinburgh Futures Institute | School of Literatures, Languages and Cultures Head of the Edinburgh Language Technology Group Co-lead of the Edinburgh Clinical NLP Group On 16 Mar 2025, at 22:20, Paul Harrison via discuss <[email protected]> wrote: This email was sent to you by someone outside the University. You should only click on links or attachments if you are certain that the email is genuine and the content is safe. Hi Toby, I'm following this ongoing discussion with interest. Great to see this being added to Carpentries material. We recommend that you avoid getting help from generative AI while you learn to code I was a bit surprised by this negative conclusion. My feeling would be that it isn't reasonable to expect people not to use these tools while learning, and therefore they need to know how to use them safely. And they do seem quite good at explaining code or suggesting different approaches. Here's a slide I used in a recent workshop, although I'm far from 100% happy with it. https://monashdatafluency.github.io/r-progtidy/slides/introduction.html#11 This list is for the purpose of general discussion about The Carpentries including community activities, upcoming events, and announcements. Some other lists you may also be interested in include discuss-hpc, discuss-r, and our local groups. Visit https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/ to learn more. All activity on this and other Carpentries spaces should abide by The Carpentries Code of Conduct found here: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html The Carpentries<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/latest> / discuss / see discussions<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss> + participants<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/members> + delivery options<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription> Permalink<https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tcd00cc2e2d640548-Mb78a6c6c7c6e529a02e1d76a> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336. Is e buidheann carthannais a th’ ann an Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann, clàraichte an Alba, àireamh clàraidh SC005336. ------------------------------------------ This list is for the purpose of general discussion about The Carpentries including community activities, upcoming events, and announcements. Some other lists you may also be interested in include discuss-hpc, discuss-r, and our local groups. Visit https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/ to learn more. All activity on this and other Carpentries spaces should abide by The Carpentries Code of Conduct found here: https://docs.carpentries.org/topic_folders/policies/code-of-conduct.html The Carpentries: discuss Permalink: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/Tc7ad8d3684017cd0-Me1a6ffcd3a0910164e9015a4 Delivery options: https://carpentries.topicbox.com/groups/discuss/subscription
