Blog Post #2: AI & Me

Hello again and welcome back for my second blog post! I’d like to discuss how we are using artificial intelligence in our project. Our project is focused on using artificial intelligence tools to implement a web app that helps computer science students track their jobs, skills, etc. We ultimately want to better understand these tools’ capabilities and limitations through our documented interactions. So, as you can imagine, our project fits nicely into this topic!

So, how are we using AI? Well, given the unique nature of our project, we can use it for pretty much anything. Any interaction is a potential data point in our quest to understand how to better use these tools. We’ve used AI to help build API routes, discuss database schema designs and best practices, learn more about the technologies and frameworks we employ, etc.

Since it sounds like we’ve had a lot of interactions with AI over the last few weeks, we probably have some pros and cons to share? I won’t dive into the specifics of our findings and key takeaways (save those insights for the final report, right!?), but let’s focus on some good aspects first. AI can be a great thought partner to learn more on a topic and it is always available to talk (well, unless the servers are down!). Most of these tools are very accessible and free. And from what we’ve found so far, even the free tools are quite powerful. It’s helped us learn and accomplish so much, in such a short time. Now, let’s talk about the bad. The tools make mistakes so it’s important to verify responses. It can also lead you in a direction where you end up more confused and in disarray than when you started.

So, has AI made me a better programmer? I think so. During our project, it has helped me learn so much more about a variety of topics. Using the tools with an approach on focused learning has helped me uncover so many new things with the technologies we are working on. For those that question everything, AI offers paths to exploration. 

You may be wondering if at this point you’re just reading some AI response, and perhaps feeling disappointed that the cover image wasn’t better. Well, these are my own words and the cover image was made using the shape in google docs. So you’re not reading something from a biased AI, but rather from a person who lacks artistic talent. I’ll wrap up now and I’ll just say that I’m looking forward to continuing to uncover and understand more about AI on our project journey. Be on the lookout for my next update coming soon!