Next year, Ivy League students at one of America’s most prestigious and expensive colleges will have the opportunity to learn from AI. Harvard University’s introductory coding course, which typically enrolls around 1000 students per semester, is “experimenting” with a ChatGPT-powered teaching assistant. Professor David Malan, who oversees the course, explains that the introduction of the ‘CS50 bot’ is in line with the course’s history of incorporating new software. He sees the AI teacher as an evolution of this tradition, with the hope of eventually achieving a 1:1 teacher-student ratio for every student, providing them with personalized software-based learning tools.
Harvard’s newspaper, the Crimson, reports that Professor Malan and his team are currently experimenting with both GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 models. However, outside of the Ivy League, developers and software engineers have struggled to integrate OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 into their workflow. Some developers commenting on the Hacker News forum express concerns about the quality of the code generated by the new AI, noting that it feels worse and more bug-prone than previous versions.
Considering the significant cost of a four-year degree from Harvard (estimated at around $334,000), students paying for the CS50 course will likely expect a smooth experience with ChatGPT by September. CS50, known for being one of Harvard’s most popular courses on the online learning platform edX, has undergone changes since the platform was sold to educational technology company 2U for $800 million in 2021. The course aims to reduce the time spent on assessing students’ code through the use of AI, allowing teaching fellows to focus on meaningful interaction and mentorship.
While Professor Malan acknowledges that early versions of AI programs like ChatGPT have occasionally underperformed, he believes that his AI teaching assistant will streamline the learning process and reduce tedious work. He emphasizes the importance of critical thinking for students, whether the information comes from humans or software. Indeed, college is about teaching students how to think rather than what to think.
In conclusion, Harvard’s integration of AI into its coding course reflects the institution’s commitment to innovation and delivering an exceptional learning experience to its students.
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